The Brothel in Rosenstrasse

3 The Siege

The atmosphere at Rosenstrasse had become increasingly convivial during that first week of bombardment and, even though the shelling has stopped and the Siege proper has begun (the city now has an air of desperate calm) this mood remains with us. It is Friday, October 29th 1897. Seven of us who are permanent residents have taken to eating together, rather like passengers on a small ship or guests at a provincial boarding house. Frau Schmetterling presides: our landlady, our captain. Alexandra continues to be my secret and grows resentful of her exile from the public rooms. She is beginning to exhaust me. Clara has developed a habit of keeping her company, largely I suspect to relieve me. ‘The child is bored. I’ll take her for a stroll,’ she says, or, ‘I’ve invented a new game for our little girl.’ At night Alexandra and I sleep together as usual, reserving our evenings for ‘adventures’. We go out rarely. Mirenburg has become depressing. I cannot stand to see the boarded windows and doors, the sandbags, the rubble. We have now enjoyed, singly or in combination, almost all Frau Schmetterling’s whores. The only other residents who hardly ever make an appearance at the table together are Princess Poliakoff and Lady Cromach. The Englishwoman is frequently out, presumably gathering material for her articles. I lunch Alexandra goes with Clara to Falfnersallee ‘to look for bargains’. I enjoy a good bortsch and a veal cutlet. ‘Mister’ and Trudi wait on us. Frau Schmetterling is kind to both of them. Occasionally ‘Mister’ will be asked to join us, but usually he smiles and refuses, preferring the company of Chagani, the brooding ex-acrobat, who sometimes assists him. His gentleness can be disconcerting, even sinister. His drunkard’s face, so youthful and open, and at the same time so cruelly ruptured, expresses a peculiar eagerness. The ruined veins, the rough, red flesh, the set of his soft mouth and the watery innocence of his eyes give immediate notice of his despair, his determination to remain in some way unprotected against the terrors of the world and so, surely by an effort of will alone, retain the untroubled perceptions of boyhood. Elvira, Frau Schmetterling’s daughter, sometimes dines with us. When she and ‘Mister’ are together she seems the more mature; a self-possessed, tiny version of her mother. ‘Mister’s’ expression becomes softer, more attractive, in her company. Madame’s chow dogs, black and unpredictable, complete the menage, panting around our feet as if they are waiting for one of us to drop dead. The Dutch banker, Leopold van Geest, sallow and animated, wearing a sort of invalid’s blanket-jacket, cuts enthusiastically at his meat. He has decided that it will be at least a month before Berlin sends help. ‘The Prince should have made a Treaty with one or another of the Powers. Then Holzhammer could not have acted at all. Badehoff-Krasny was too confident. He thought he stood on a platform balanced over the torrent. But it was a tightrope, yes? He leaned back to relax and—Pouf!’ He gestures dramatically with his fork. ‘Now the Germans will let him drown a little before fishing him out. They want the best terms, after all.’ He shrugs. He has a wife and thirteen children in the Hague and is in no hurry to return home.

‘The whole city could be destroyed within a month,’ says Rakanaspya in that husky voice of his. The anarchist has been placed under a sort of house-arrest by the police. Frau Schmetterling had agreed to his staying ‘so long as he behaves himself,’ she said. ‘We want no morbid subjects discussed here’. He wipes his lips and beard with his napkin. ‘All those poor people dead while kings and princes play at diplomacy!’ Frau Schmetterling catches his eye and utters a small cough. He sighs. Caroline Vacarescu, beside him, is sympathetic. She, too, is on sufferance, having been released from custody four days ago. She is dressed magnificently as usual. She has no intention, she assures us, of lowering her standards. Her face is heavily made-up. Mueller was tried by military tribunal last week and executed for espionage. The papers have been emphatic: his fate was an example to others. Some of us are a little uneasy in her defiant, knowing presence. Count Belozerski, the eminent Russian novelist and the most recent arrival, leans his handsome face over the table and murmurs in French: ‘I have never seen so many dead soldiers.’ He was turned back from the walls while trying to leave Mirenburg. He alone has witnessed the reality outside and is allowed to say more than anyone on the subject. Frau Schmetterling indulges him because she admires, she says, his mind. But she is also impressed by his connections and his beauty. His pale blond hair, together with his slightly Oriental cast of features, give him a striking and dominating appearance. He is tall and slender and his military stance is tempered by a natural grace which serves to soften the first impression of a distant and somewhat menacing figure. Count Belozerski is proud, he says, of his Tartar forebears. He sometimes refers romantically to his ‘Siberian blood’. He is in all important respects a gentlemanly European. ‘Of the best type,’ says Frau Schmetterling. Caroline Vacarescu also dotes on him, but Belozerski has confided to me that he is determined to have nothing to do with her. ‘Her selfishness,’ he told me last night, ‘is mitigated only by her recklessness. Of course both qualities are alarming to a man like myself. One should be in love with such women in one’s youth. To take up with the likes of Caroline Vacarescu in middle-life is to risk too much. My cousin was, short while, involved with her. She almost ruined him. She is the most extravagant creature I have ever known and I Prefer to admire her from a distance.’ I, of course, feel friendly towards her, but that could be because I have nothing that she would want. It is my belief Count Belozerski is attracted to her. He is a little inclined to overstate his case. He adds: ‘One is dealing, as a novelist, all day with ambiguities, with problems of human character. One does not need any more ambiguities in one’s life.’ Perhaps he is right. I am not a novelist. I tell him I thrive on ambiguity. For me a woman must always have it or she is not attractive to me. He laughs. ‘But then for you life is a novel, eh? Thank God not everyone is the same, or I should have no readers.’

‘The hospitals cannot cope with the wounded.’ Egon Wilke sits immediately to the left of Frau Schmetterling, across from Belozerski. He is a stocky fellow, with the body and bearing of an artisan. His hands are huge and his large head has brown hair, cropped close to the skull. He wears a sort of dark pea-jacket and a white cravat. He is an old friend of Frau Schmetterling’s, apparently from the days when she ran a house of an altogether different character in Odessa, where criminals had gathered. These acquaintances from her past are usually discouraged from visiting Rosenstrasse, but Wilke, who has been introduced to the company as a jewel merchant, is the exception. Frau Schmetterling is evidently very fond of him. He saved her, it is rumoured, from ruin (perhaps prison) in the old days and lent her the money to start the Rosenstrasse house. He always stays with her when visiting Mirenburg and, like me, is treated as a favoured client. He behaves impeccably, never bringing his business to her house, though he is almost certainly still a successful thief. He chews his food thoughtfully, takes a sip of wine and continues: ‘They are requisitioning convents, private houses, even restaurants, I have heard. These Mirenburger soldiers, poor devils, aren’t used to fighting.’

Frau Schmetterling says firmly: ‘We know how hellish it is a( the defences, and I am sure we sympathise, but this is scarcely appropriate conversation for luncheon.’ Wilke looks almost surprised, then smiles to himself and continues to eat. There is not much else to talk about. We have no real information

Holzhammer has made a grandiose declaration in which he has praised his own sense of humanity and love of beauty in stopping the bombardment ‘to give Prince Badehoff-Krasny time to reconsider his foolish and unpatriotic decision which is causing misery to so many’. He claims that most of Waldenstein is now his. The newspapers on the other hand are continuing to report failing morale and shortage of supplies amongst the rebels. The peasants and landowners have all deserted Holzhammer, they say, and he is entirely reliant on his ‘Bulgarian butchers’, his Austrian cannon. Prince Badehoff-Krasny took his State Carriage into the streets during the bombardment and rode the length of Mirenburg, from the Cesny Gate to the Mirov Gate, waving to cheering crowds. Deputations of citizens have signed oaths of undying loyalty to the Crown and the Mayor has sworn to take a sword, if necessary, and personally drive Holzhammer from the battlements, should he try to enter the city. Holzhammer has probably decided to attempt to starve Mirenburg into submission, saving his troops and his ammunition for a final attack. The blockade is total. The river is guarded on both sides and water-gates have been installed under the bridges on the outskirts so that no citizen can leave by that route or bring supplies in; while a huge barricade has been thrown up around the city, making it impossible for anyone to come or go either by road or rail. Belozerski has reported seeing corpses left to rot in trenches, or half-buried by their comrades as they fell back towards the walls. Field-guns, too, have been abandoned. He observed one trench which was ‘a single, fluttering mass of carrion crows’. Private citizens are no longer allowed on the walls. We are under martial law. Yesterday, at lunch, Belozerski said: ‘God knows what appalling treachery led to ‘his situation. It was a massacre out there.’ And then he became embarrassed, since Caroline Vacarescu could probably have answered his rhetorical question, at least in part. She had continued to eat as if she had not heard him. We are all as tactful as possible, even Rakanaspya who sometimes fumes like one of his own anarchist bombs but never explodes. It is only in private, in the company of one or another of our fellow guests, that we express strong opinions. Last night I sat with Clara in her sitting-room while Alexandra giggled in bed with Aimee, who comes from my native Saxony. Clara is in a better position than many to hear what is actually going on. Her regular clients seem to make up half the Mirenburg Civil Service and she sometimes has a General come to see her. She is discreet, in the main, but she believes that the situation might be worse than most of us imagine. ‘A military train is believed to have arrived from Vienna. If the Austrians give Holzhammer direct aid then Germany must either begin another war, which she does not presently want, or turn a blind eye to what is going on here. I think she will turn a blind eye.’ I found this difficult to believe: ‘With so many of her citizens still here?’ Clara had looked at me knowingly. ‘How many, Ricky? And how many German soldiers would die in a war with Austria-Hungary?’ Then Alexandra had called to me and I had gone in to smile. She had tied one of Clara’s dildoes onto her in some way and was inexpertly fucking Aimee who was helpless with laughter. ‘Help me, Ricky, darling!’ There is an ache in my back today. Papadakis says I am not resting enough. He says I should set these memoirs aside. ‘You will kill yourself.’ I tell him that it does not matter. ‘Can’t you see I am living again? Can’t you see that?’ He wets his red lips. ‘You are mad. The doctor told me to expect something like this. Let me bring him up.’ I set my pen on the pages, across the words. I am patient. ‘I am more purely rational,’ 1 tell him, ‘than I have been for two years. And I should point out that there is hardly any pain. It is quite evident that much of what I was suffering was psychosomatic. Haven’t you noticed how much better my morale is. You would rather I was ill, eh? You have no power over me now that I am recovering!’ He will not respond to this. He sits beside the window, staring down towards the sea. His back i to me. I refuse to let him irritate me. Leopold van Geest and stroll in Frau Schmetterling’s garden. Most of the flowers are gone. It is a mystery where she continues to find fresh ones, fill her house. Beyond the walls are the roofs and turrets ot deserted monastery. ‘In here,’ says van Geest, ‘one is permitted the illusion of power. But we know that Frau Schmetterling is the only one who really wields power and that she derives it from her ladies. From the cunt.’ He shakes his head and pulls the blanket-jacket more closely to him. ‘Yet we have power in the outside world to create a society which needs and permits brothels. Why cannot we exploit that power directly? Why do we feel the need to come here and be masters when we cannot feel that we are masters in our own homes, over our own women—at least, not sexually. Not really. You can sense the difference.’

‘I have very little experience of the domestic life.’ Van Geest nods as if I have made a profound observation. He is moody this afternoon. ‘Your instincts are good, von Bek. Marriages are based on romantic lies and decent women demand that we maintain those lies at all costs, lest the reality of their situation be brought home to them. Here the whores are paid to lie to us. At home we pay for our domestic security with lies of our own.’ He looks up at the sky. ‘Do you think it will snow?’

‘It’s a little early for that.’

He turns to go back inside. ‘Well, I shall probably be home for Christmas,’ he says.

Clara comes to join me. ‘Our Alice has bought herself a thousand new petticoats!’ She kisses me on the cheek. Somehow we have taken to calling Alexandra ‘Alice’, while I use ‘Rose’ as a nickname for Clara. She, in turn, calls me ‘Your Lordship’ in English. Alexandra does not know our nicknames. ‘She is upstairs, now, trying them on.’ Van Geest lifts his cap and enters the house. ‘What were you talking about?’ She is all rustling velvet in her long winter coat. Marriage, I believe,’ I say. ‘I’m not altogether sure. Vantreest seemed to want to get something off his chest.’ Clara is amused by this. ‘That’s our job. Whores are trained to listen. What was he saying?’

‘That domestic bliss is founded on a lie.’

The argument is familiar to her. ‘Working here, one begins to disbelieve in any great difference between people. The girls in this house have more varied personalities than most clients, and that’s saying very little, I should think. You cannot pursue individuality here. There’s more realism and virtue, perhaps, in celebrating commonality. There are certain lies, surely, we would all rather believe.’ She links her arm in mine. We are almost like husband and wife.

We go to peer in at Frau Schmetterling’s little hothouse, at the orchids and the fleshy lilies, and at her aviary where a pair of pink cockatoos, an African Grey parrot and a macaw fidget. ‘Frau Schmetterling has no interest in birds,’ says Clara. She puts her lips together and makes kissing sounds at the gloomy creatures. ‘These were given to her at the same time, I believe, as the peacocks. The peacocks died. She’s sentimental enough to want to keep her parrots properly, but they get no attention from her. ‘Mister’ looks after them. Some of us have asked to keep them in our rooms, but she says it would be vulgar.’ I am becoming impatient to see Alexandra, even though I know she will be demanding something of me the moment I walk in to our room. ‘Shall you be going to the celebration this evening?’ asks Clara. I had forgotten. Frau Schmetterling had mentioned it at lunch. ‘To honour the end of the bombardment,’ she had said. ‘It will cheer us all up.’

‘I’ll look in for half-an-hour or so,’ I say. ‘And you?’ Clara nods. ‘Oh, yes. I think it will be amusing.’ Since Alexandra will sulk if I go I have almost made up my mind not to bother. ‘They are difficult, these children,’ says Clara. ‘More trouble than they’re worth, sometimes.’ I feel a moment’s resentment of what I take to be her criticism, but she squeezes my arm and the mood vanishes. I enjoy Clara’s company more and more and continue to be impressed by her tolerant intelligence. ‘By the way,’ she says casually, ‘did you hear that they had attempted to burn down the synagogue. The Jews are being held to blame, as usual.’ I laugh at this. ‘Where would we be without them?’ But Clara is not pleased with my response. ‘I came through the Quarter on the way home. It’s miserable. No market, of course, to speak of. Such a terrible sense of fear, Ricky.’

‘You must guard against getting too sentimental, Rose my darling, at times like these. It’s not like you.’ I kiss her cheek She shakes her head and does her best to dismiss her mood. It occurs to me for a second that perhaps she is worried about her own fate. After all, Frau Schmetterling is Jewish, at least by birth. I return to the rooms. Alexandra is wearing a new negligee of chocolate-brown trimmed with cream lace and her little body, now marked with the fading reminders of a dozen violent nights, is pale in the afternoon light which enters through embroidered nets at the windows. Couch, floor and chairs are piled with new chemises and drawers, with white ostrich feathers, with an ermine-trimmed stole, like froth on a river, and she tugs at her curls, peering with ill temper into an oval mirror which hangs on the wall over a lacquered Chinese sideboard. ‘Another raid on Falfnersallee,’ I say with a smile. She pulls down an eyelid, looking for blood. ‘They’re almost giving things away, Ricky.’ She has bought a selection of new cosmetics, which she has scattered over the sideboard, and begins to try them out, asking me for my opinion of this lip-rouge and that powder. ‘You’ll destroy your skin,’ I say dispassionately. ‘You have youth and health, natural beauty;’ She makes a face. ‘You are certainly no lover of what is natural, my dear.’ I bridle. ‘Nonsense. But play at grown-up ladies, if that’s what pleases you. Did you buy a paper?’ She is distant. ‘I forgot.’ I am irritated. ‘It’s not a great deal to ask.’ I pick at feathers and linen, becoming even more angry when I think I shall have to ask Frau Schmetterling for more cash. I have given her a blank cheque, to cover our expenses. ‘You should have told Clara to remember,’ says Alexandra. ‘She’s always reliable. Anyway, what do you want a paper for? You told me there’s nothing in it now but lies.’ The negligee has fallen back to reveal her ribs. ‘You’re not eating properly,’ I say. ‘You’re getting too thin.’ She sets down a little pot with a rap. ‘Men want everything. A lady has to be thin in society and plump in bed. Yet you complain about the way I lace my stays!’

‘I’m concerned for your health. I feel some responsibility.’

‘You should not. It is none of your business.’

I want to put an end to this. I embrace her, fondling her shoulders and breasts, but she pulls away. ‘You treat me like a child! You spend all your time with other people. Are you fucking the whores while I’m out?’

‘You know I’m not. You enjoy Clara’s company. You told me so. You’re always off on expeditions.’

‘In a veil. Like a Turkish concubine! You don’t love me. You’re bored with me. You refuse to let me be myself. I’m not your daughter. I wanted to get away from that. You sound worse than my father sometimes.’

‘Then you should not behave like a little girl.’ Such banal exchanges are terrible. I hate listening to the words on my own lips. I have said nothing of this kind since I was eighteen. ‘All the interesting people are downstairs,’ she says. ‘You talk about them. I never see them. Princess Poliakoff, Count Belozerski, Rudolph Stefanik. You and Clara joke about them. I am left out of everything. Why do you want me? You could have a dozen whores and never notice I was missing.’

‘I love you,’ I say. ‘That’s the difference.’

She snorts. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘I’m beginning to think there is not very much to know. Perhaps you are entirely my invention.’

‘You bastard!’ It is the first time she has sworn at me. She repeats the oath, as if to herself. ‘You bastard.’ She begins to weep. I go to comfort her. She pulls away again. ‘What have you made me!’

‘Nothing which you were not already, or did not wish to be. I told you at the start: I am the instrument of your pleasure. I put myself at your disposal. And when I have warned you of excess you haven’t listened to me. Now you’re overtired and self-pitying. And you’re blaming me.’

Her weeping becomes more intense. ‘I don’t know any better. How can I know any better? I want so much to go to the party tonight. But you’re afraid I’ll embarrass you. And when I try to look grown-up you complain. You confuse me. You lie tome.’

‘How dare you pretend to be so naive,’ I say. ‘You have no right to demand honesty of me and argue with such patent ingenuity when you know full well what you mean and what you want. It is malice and resentment which motivates you and your methods amount to blackmail. I will not be insulted by you in this way. I will not be silent while you insult yourself. What is it that you want?’

But she refuses to be direct. The rhetoric continues between sobs. ‘You have destroyed any will I might have had. Any self-respect. You spend your time with Clara. You laugh at me behind my back.

‘Clara is your friend. You told me that you love her.’

‘She criticises constantly.’

‘Not to me.’

‘I know what she’s saying. You’re a fool if you don’t realise what she’s up to.’

I light myself a cigarette. ‘You are attempting to manufacture a crisis,’ I say, ‘and I will not be drawn. Tell me what you want.’

‘I want respect!’

‘Eventually,’ I continue, ‘it is very likely that you will wear me down sufficiently so that out of weariness or exasperation I will make you an offer and thus save you the responsibility of making your own decision. Or I will become remorseful and give you that which your conscience cannot demand. Well, I will have none of it. When you have made up your mind to speak to me directly I shall be pleased to continue this conversation.’ I sound ridiculously pompous in my own ears. She wants me to take her to the party. I am almost ready to do so, even though I know it would be unwise. But I want her to ask. Somehow I am carrying too much of the burden. I am at the door when she wails: ‘I want to go to the party!’

‘You know it would be too dangerous for us,’ I say.

‘I don’t know. I only know what you tell me. Are you frightened of their opinion?’

I am frightened, of course. I am frightened of the dream ending, of reality intruding. I leave the room. She has wounded me and I am full of self-pity. I am furious with her. I had thought things had reached a decent balance. But she is not content with promises of Paris and I can scarcely blame her, since there is no means of knowing when the siege will be over. But she has changed. I can sense that she has changed. What alterations have occurred in her strange, fantastic brain. I am as much at a loss for a satisfactory explanation as if I had attempted to analyse the perceptions and motives of a household pet. Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to respond to whatever desires that master displays. Yet she is not doing that now. Does that mean she is ready to find a new master? I feel I am somehow making a mistake; as if I have failed to understand the rules of the game. Perhaps I should not have been so direct with her. Perhaps I should have disguised my desires and remained more of a mystery to her. Or will I lose her anyway? To someone else who will represent liberty and escape to her? It seems increasingly important that we should leave Mirenburg. I will go to Police headquarters in the morning and try again to get passports for us. I have miscalculated. I blame the drugs, the atmosphere of the whorehouse. Sensuality has given way to a sort of erotomania. It could destroy everything. I must make an effort to impress her with my own common-sense. I must not weaken. Alice! I want what you were. My little girl! Have you no notion of all the emotions you have aroused in me? The tenderness, the willingness to sacrifice everything for you? You cannot know what I have given up already, what I am still prepared to give up. You are myself. And we are Mirenburg. I find that I am outside Clara’s room. I knock. She tells me to enter. She has Natalia, her dark friend, with her. They are drinking tea. ‘I am so sorry to disturb you.’ I make to go, but both wave me in. ‘Is the child sleeping?’ asks Clara. ‘No,’ I say, 'she decided to have a tantrum, so I’ve left her to cool down.’ Clara and Natalia both seem to approve of this decision. I fall into Clara’s couch, immediately relieved. ‘What am I to do with her?’

‘You wouldn’t welcome my answer,’ says Clara.

‘True. You think I should have told her to go back to her parents.’

‘It isn’t my business to say.’ Clara offers me her own teacup. I accept it. ‘I intend to marry her,’ I say, ‘when we get to Paris. As a wife, she will have more power, more self-respect. She’ll begin to grow up in no time.’

Natalia and Clara exchange a look which is meaningless to me. ‘My father wants me to marry again. Her father will be only too happy to let her marry me once he finds out what has happened. I’m worrying about nothing. She wants to come to the celebration tonight. I’ll bring her.’

‘That should relieve her boredom,’ says Clara. ‘I’ve heard Princess Poliakoff and Lady Cromach have decided to attend. And there are other guests. Some politicians. Some intellectuals. It will be a fine night. You might meet Dolly’s fiancé, too.’ Dolly is the most sweet-natured girl in the house and much in demand with older clients. She is by no means beautiful, with her long nose, large teeth and her frizz of dark hair, but she is good-hearted and genuinely interested in the doings of her gentlemen, spending hours chatting with them. One of these, a pleasant man by all accounts, the owner of a large furrier’s business in Ladungsgasse, is determined to marry her as soon as she wishes to retire. It is a standing joke between them. They often discuss the bridal gown she will have, the church they favour, the places they will visit on their honeymoon. Dolly has taken to wearing her gentleman’s engagement ring: an emerald. She will accept presents from nobody else and on Wednesdays and Sundays when he calls will always make sure she is available only to him. Natalia and Clara continue with their conversation. They are discussing a woman I have not met. The mother had been supporting her drug-addicted daughter, I gather, for some years, paying for her opium and morphine, but her daughter had become homeless and needed work. Against her normal caution, and because the daughter was known to her, Frau Schmetterling had agreed she could work at Rosenstrasse for a few weeks until she saved the fare to go to relatives in Prague. ‘Frau Schmetterling is so innocent in some ways,’ says Natalia. ‘She was surprised at the demand when it became known that a mother and daughter were working in the same house. She could not believe so many of her customers would insist on having the two women in the same bed at the same time! She was very glad when what’s-her-name went on to Prague.’ Clara takes her empty tea-cup from me. ‘She’s a funny little woman. Quite prudish sometimes, eh? What do you think, Ricky? You’ve known her longer than any of us really.’

‘She’s the mother I never had,’ I say lightly. ‘I love her. She worries about me so much!’

‘Oh, I think we all do,’ says Clara. She seems to be making some sort of joke, so I smile.

‘I hear that General von Landoff will be here tonight,’ says Natalia. ‘Madame has decided to treat with the military for once. She’s making a big concession, eh?’

‘A prudent one at this time,’ I suggest. ‘She would rather have one general invading Rosenstrasse than a regiment of privates. War can make politicians of us all.’

‘We are expert politicians here,’ insists Clara with a smile, ‘every one of us. If Frau Schmetterling had been in charge, there would have been no War to begin with!’

Natalia is weighing a piece of her lace collar in her small palm. ‘It’s pretty material,’ she says, ‘isn’t it? That very fine cotton which sometimes I prefer to silk. Silk is too much like skin. There is no contrast. Shall I go on telling you what the Mayor asked me to do?’

‘I’d love to hear,’ I say, settling back in Clara’s cushions. ‘You old eunuch,’ says Clara affectionately. ‘I sometimes think you’d rather gossip than fuck!’ Natalia begins a rather ordinary tale about the Mayor’s make-believe, his penchant for imitating farmyard animals. I learn more, too, about Caroline Vacarescu. Clara says she deliberately pursues and conquers the wives of famous men. ‘It used to be her speciality. Her seductions became an inextricable mixture of business and pleasure. Her mistresses were often grateful for the opportunities for dalliance without much risk of scandal and they were party to secrets which proved useful to Caroline in her other activities. They say she’s probably a millionairess. The truth is she’s probably spent everything. Caroline Vacarescu’s extravagances have taken on the nature of an art; her raw materials are other people’s money (or, at a pinch, credit) and her canvas is the fashionable world. Her clothes are the most expensive, her houses the most richly furnished and her presents to her protectors (who, of course, supplied her with the means to make the purchases in the first place) are generous. But this affair with Mueller was more serious, I think. His death has affected her quite badly. She’s desperate to get back to Buda-Pesht. She’s asking everybody. If anyone can do it, Caroline can.’ I take my leave of the ladies and return to my Alice to announce she can go to the ball tonight. She hugs me and kisses me as if I am a favourite uncle. We fall into bed together and once again the dream comes alive.

Papadakis seems to be ill. Perhaps he weakens as I grow stronger. ‘As soon as this is finished I shall be getting up,’ I tell him. ‘And we’ll travel. We’ll go to Venice first and then Vienna, or perhaps Paris. What do you think?’ He is a mangy old spaniel. He looks at me and wheezes. ‘You must be careful,’ I say. ‘You aren’t getting any younger. What was the name of that woman who worked for you in London? The one I slept with?’ He frowns. ‘Sonia, wasn’t it?’ I say. ‘She was Jewish, I think. She used to sit in that little basement flat of hers in Bloomsbury and curse you. Then we’d go to the British Museum in the twilight, just before it closed. I can smell the leaves around our ankles. She made you seem far more interesting than you turned out to be. She was obsessed by Egypt, I remember. By the Book of the Dead. What’s happened to your daughter? You haven’t had a letter in a year. Two years. She has forgotten her Papa.’ Papadakis has brought an uncorked bottle of Niersteiner and a glass. He puts it on the table beside the bed. ‘Tell me when you need more,’ he says. ‘What? Is it poisoned? Or do you hope I’ll drink myself into silence? Your daughter. Isn’t she divorced yet, from that foolish Frenchman? Or are you a grandfather, do you think? Are you a grandfather? There is still time to accept the responsibilities of a parent. I am not going to be on your hands much longer.’ He pours some of the wine into the glass. ‘Think what you like,’ he says. ‘Do what you like. Say what you like. It’s good wine. There are a few bottles left. Let me know when you want some more.’ I sip the hock. It is perfect. I am in charge of myself again. ‘Buy flowers when you’re next in town,’ I tell him. ‘As many as possible. Deep reds and blues. Good, heavy scent. Whatever you can find. Spend what you need to spend. I’ll have flowers instead of food. I am celebrating the death of an old friend and my own return to life. Did you ever really visit that doctor I recommended? That follower of Freud’s?’ He shakes his head: ‘I have no time for psychoanalysis or any other fashionable remedies. My faith remains in Science. The rest is just quackery, no matter how it’s dressed up.’ He amuses me. ‘Oh, what we owe to Vienna’ I sing. I descend with Alexandra on my arm. I am dressed in perfect black and white, she in scarlet and gold, with diamonds, pearls, rubies, with black-rimmed eyes and gaudy cheeks, her age unguessable, her identity engulfed. She walks with back straight, her head lifted with arrogant cocaine. We reach the foyer and pause. From the salon comes Strauss and a swell of voices, smoke and the scents of fresh-cooked meat. Alice trembles with pleasure and I am my happiest. We have concocted our masquerade: She is to be the Countess Alice of Elsinore tonight, from Denmark, although her home is now in Florence. She is twenty-three and my cousin. The lie is not meant to convince, merely to confuse the curious. ‘No one will recognise me,’ she says. ‘Friends of my father or my brother know me only as a little girl in sailor-blouses.’ I am feeling so euphoric that I believe I might even welcome a scene in which her father, for instance, was present. We are through the doors now and into the plush and velvet, the crystal and marble, of the salon. The place is alive with potential danger: journalists and several of the great scandal-mongers of Mirenburg, including Herbert Block the song-writer and Voorman the painter. Voorman is the only real problem, but he has no memory of her as the same creature he pretended to court at The Amoral Jew. He kisses her hand as he is introduced and she listens with some merriment as he suggests, again, that she is the goddess he has always imagined he will one day paint. A young Deputy, Baron Karsovin, her distant cousin, suggests as he wrinkles his pink brow beneath an already balding head, that they must have met before, ‘perhaps in Venice’, but he is anxious to return to his discussion of the Prince of Wales, Mrs Keppel and French foreign policy. And an old gentleman, wearing all his orders on his coat, says he believes he knew Alice’s mother. ‘Indeed he did,’ she whispers. ‘He was her lover four or five years ago and used to bribe me with chocolates from Schmidt’s. He bribed Father with secrets of the Bourse and paid for our new house as a result!’ The General is already here, back to the fireplace and looking so brave he might be facing a firing squad. I almost expect someone to blindfold him. He is very tall and thin, with blue veins in his long neck and white whiskers a little yellow about the lips and chin. His hair is quite long. He wears outdated evening-dress, standing with his hands behind him under his frock-coat and talking to Frau Schmetterling (in unusual off-the-shoulder royal blue and silver with a small bustle) and Caroline Vacarescu whose reputation, I suspect, he knows, for he is wary as well as reassuring, though she has succeeded in flattering him. Alice and I are introduced.

‘Is there no chance of getting up a group of those who wish to leave?’ asks Caroline, all sweet perfume and vulnerable, whispering russet flounces. ‘If only we could reach the mountains, say. Under a white flag. There must be some sort of communication between the two sides. Some understanding that the civilized world would be scandalised when it found out how decent people were being treated.’

‘But my dear lady, there is absolutely no danger to you here,’ says the General. ‘Holzhammer has used up all his ammunition. And the bombardment, you must have noticed, was concentrated entirely on the centre of the city. You are far safer in Mirenburg. There are bandits abroad in the country areas. Deserters. Disaffected peasants. You can imagine.’

‘Are we to understand that no permits will be issued at all?’ I say.

‘No chance whatsoever, at present.’ The General speaks as if he imparts the best news in the world. ‘Holzhammer can scarcely hold out another week with all the desertions. Then—a quick counter-attack, with or without Berlin’s support—then it will be over. We are biding our time. It is a question of choosing the moment.’

‘So our losses have not been as great as they say?’ says Caroline almost waspishly.

‘Our losses, dear lady, have been minimal. Austria is going to regret her involvement in what is, after all, little more than a domestic squabble.’ Caroline darts me a look, as if she hopes for an ally, but I am helpless. With a little nasal sigh, like a lioness who has made too short a charge and has seen her prey escape, she stalks off in search of other game. Clara greets us. She has discarded her usual tailor-mades and is wearing a gold dress, her hair in a Pompadour. She looks at least five years younger and is arm in arm with a rather drunk Rakanaspya who wears a dove-grey suit a little too large for him, evidently borrowed. He speaks so elliptically to the General, in such thick French, that nobody understands him. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ says von Landoff, and nods, as if to a simpleton. ‘Another week or less and you may go home.’ Rakanaspya, with one eye on Frau Schmetterling, lapses into the security of Russian, plainly saying all he wishes to say in that language and so releasing his feelings without giving much offence to his hostess. Clara says: ‘Good evening to you both. You look stunning. A perfect match,’ and she bears against Rakanaspya with her shoulder to steer him off towards the middle of the room where Block enjoys the flattery of the ladies and Stefanik drones moodily on the subject of flight. Princess Poliakoff makes her entrance. She is in black tulle and pearls, true to form, while her lover is a swan in fold upon fold ot Doucet lace, approaching as if she has just landed on water and is coasting towards the shore. Her short curly hair has a torque around it bearing two pale mauve ostrich feathers which match her fan. She seems to wear no make-up but is delicately English in her healthy colouring. Alice wants to know who she is and when I tell her she whispers: ‘Let’s talk to them. They seem far more interesting.’ Occasionally, by a less-than-careful movement she betrays her youth. We make our way to the Lesbian couple. Everyone is introduced. ‘We have seen nothing of you,’ I say. ‘You snub us indiscriminately!’

‘I haven’t been well,’ says the Princess. ‘And Diana has been a saint. Also, of course, she has to look for material.’ Lady Cromach takes a testy interest in her fan, then offers me one of her soft, sardonic stares and says in that insinuating voice: ‘And how is your health, Herr von Bek?’

‘Excellent, as usual, Lady Cromach. Thank you. Are your articles about the War already entertaining the readers of the Gaulois and the News?’

‘The telegraph is down. And the carrier pigeons are unreliable. I have no idea. For a while I thought I was bribing a little man in the military despatch office, but he was dismissed a few days ago. I fear my work will be retrospective when it appears, and nobody is overly interested in the fate of Mirenburg. Are they?’ She seems to want to know. ‘I content myself with doing atmosphere-pieces for the monthlies. I keep busy. What a charming brooch, my dear.’ She peers towards Alice’s breasts. ‘You say that you are a guest here, too?’ Princess Poliakoff looks distracted and jealous. She puts one of those elongated fingers to her mouth, then withdraws it carefully to her side. ‘How’s the minstrel, Ricky?’

‘Singing as sweetly as ever,’ I say. ‘And teaching me to play the banjo.’ I’m surprised she still believes me. She pulls her companion away from us. ‘You have a lovely cousin,’ says Lady Cromach; she winks at me behind the Princess’s back. I find her extremely attractive. I believe she is thoroughly intrigued by me. Alice fumes. ‘What an awful witch!’

‘Lady Diana?’

‘Of course not.’ She is on my arm again. We move towards the buffet. ‘It’s much more ordinary than I expected. I’d imagined it—well—Oriental. Decadent. It’s almost like one of Mother’s Evenings.’

‘Except that most of the women are whores and all the men are lechers.’ I hand her some cold salmon.

‘Then it’s exactly like one of Mother’s Evenings.’ She laughs. I have not for a long time known her so carelessly cheerful. I love her. It is such a relief to feel that things are normal again. ‘You look very handsome tonight,’ she says. ‘As you always used to look. I’m glad you seem happy, Ricky.’

‘I’m happy that you’re happy. It is so easy, my little one, to make you happy.’ I am full of tenderness for her.

‘I’m happy because you’ve taken me seriously and are treating me—I don’t know—as an equal. I’m far older than my age. People have often said so.’

You will always be my own sweet little girl, Alice. My lascivious child, my dreaming daughter-wife. I want the soft, sudden flesh, the sweet dunes, the little caves. The music of your shouts and your pleasure. I bite your neck, your throat, your shoulder. I will do whatever you want. I will say and become whatever you want, to keep you as I want you to be. This turn in her conversation begins to depress me. I ask her whom she would like to meet next. ‘That’s Van Geest, the banker, with Therese. And that, of course, is Count Belozerski. Our Lesbians are talking to Wilke, the jewel-thief. Would you like to meet him. He’s usually very grave and of course doesn’t talk much about his work.’ The salon is growing noisier, a trifle more boisterous. The General moves away from the fireplace beaming like a baby with Natalia on one arm and Aimee on the other, to sample the buffet. He is here, after all, to forget the War. There is champagne everywhere. The corks are a cannonade which mocks recent events. We banish Holzhammer and the doors are rolled back before we can approach the Russian novelist; the little ballroom is revealed where, on a curtained dais amongst potted palms, sits an all-woman orchestra. ‘How terrible,’ says the Princess as she sweeps past with her friend, 'that we should look to Vienna for our gaiety when she is presently causing us so much pain.’ And she and her lover boldly begin the dancing, to the applause of the others, who gradually begin to join them on the floor: by Clara and a scowling Stefanik, watching his feet and hers, Frau Schmetterling and the courteous Belozerski, by Alice and myself. ‘Ta ta ta, ta ta turn,’ shouts General von Landoff, spinning with Natalia. It is as if we are suddenly all much drunker. The real world is whirling silk and painted flesh, wine and perfume and flowers. Soon I am standing back and laughing as Clara dances with Poliakoff and Alice with Lady Diana. Skirts are lifted, ties are loosened, petticoats bounce in the warmth of the chandeliers. The orchestra is made up chiefly of middle-aged women, a little shabbily dressed, and respectable, but there are three young girls, all dark-complexioned and possibly sisters. It is the cellist who attracts my attention. She is as plump as the others but considerably prettier and playing with evident passion, her legs spread to accommodate her instrument, and her whole body swaying as she plies her bow, her eyes as rapt as a woman’s in the throes of love-making. Belozerski is talking to Natalia. ‘I had decided to visit the estate of a favourite old relative in the Ukraine,’ he says. ‘I’d spent most of my boyhood summers there but this was the first time I’d gone in winter. Earlier that year I received a pardon from St Petersburg so was no longer an exile, but by then had established a home in Paris and felt no great wish to uproot myself. However, this visit was as much to confirm my pardon as to satisfy curiosity about cousins and aunts and uncles, whom I had not seen in fifteen years. Most of the journey from the railway station was by troika, for it was snowing. I had forgotten how wide the steppe was. The snow was like a white ocean and trees stuck out over the horizon like the masts of wrecks. My wife, who is French, chose to remain behind so I was alone save for the old peasant who drove the troika. We were about half-way to the estate when memory suddenly came back. I have never experienced the like. It was a dream: I seemed to drown in recollections which were as vivid as the original events. I relived those summers, even as the sleigh moved rapidly over the snow, so by the time I arrived I was actually shocked to notice it was winter. The poignancy of that experience, my dear Natalia, is indescribable. It left me rather depressed. I mourned for lost opportunities and deeply regretted the ill-considered romanticism which had led me to take up the cause of nationalism. Yet I know my life has been worthwhile and far more interesting in Paris than if I had remained in the Kiev gubernia where I was born.’ He smiles wistfully. She smiles back in some astonishment, then turns to pour him another glass of champagne. Captain Mackenzie nods to me, on his way to speak to Count Stefanik. The Scotsman’s eye contains a kind of alert sweetness at odds with his battered and drug-ruined features. Alice and I join him. A scar causes his lip to curl in a sort of grin and his soft German, pronounced with a distinctive Scottish accent, is often impossible to understand. When one of us attempts English, however, it becomes plain that he is even less comprehensible in that language. He speaks enthusiastically with Rudolph Stefanik on the subject of balloons. He has seen them used for scouting, he says, and he has heard they had also been employed in the bombardment of Paris thirty years ago, although the Prussians had of course denied they had ever done anything so inhuman. He laughs. ‘Is Holzhammer denying the destruction of Mirenburg, I wonder? They are planning to dam up the river, apparently, and set it in a new course, so that we shall have no fresh water. Have you heard anything about that, von Bek?’ I have not. ‘I receive virtually no real news, captain. All we get here are fantastic rumours and a little gossip. We are a desert island. But you must be privy to a hundred revelations a night!’

‘I make it my business to hear nothing.’ He is almost prim. ‘It is necessary, I believe, to the rules of my particular trade. Confessors and the proprietors of opium-dens.’ He laughs. ‘We have something in common with lawyers, too.’

‘And doctors,’ says Alice.

Captain Mackenzie nods slowly. ‘And doctors, aye.’

Rudolph Stefanik moves his body in his clothes as if he is about to burst them and reveal a pair of wings. 'It would make good sense,’ he says. ‘If they were to dam the river. This whole campaign has been unprofessional. It causes needless suffering, both to troops and to civilians. The Austrians, of course, can be hopeless. I understood Holzhammer was trained in Prussia.’

‘Most of the Mirenburg officers received their schooling there,’ I tell him. ‘But they have had no practical experience. And the conditions are unusual, you will admit. Do you believe that Holzhammer has had as many desertions as they say?’

‘I was approached to find out. They wanted me to inflate the balloon and take her up on a fixed mooring. I refused. One shot would destroy my vessel—and me, for that matter. They are now talking of manufacturing their own airships. I said I would willingly give them advice.’ Stefanik smiles suddenly down on Alice. ‘As soon as this affair is settled I shall be only too pleased to take a pretty passenger into the sky and show her the world an angel sees.’ Her eyes are bright as they meet his. ‘Oh, I am not innocent enough, Count, to be able to see what an angel sees.’

‘But you are able to tempt as the devil tempted,’ I tell him, leading her away. He laughs. Voorman and Rakanaspya are deep in drunken conversation. Voorman is entertained by Rakanaspya’s seriousness. ‘The lure of this putrid sweetness!’ he exclaims. ‘How can you resist it?’

‘It is the lure of disease, of dissolution, of death—the yearning to absolve oneself of all political and moral responsibility,’ says the Russian earnestly. ‘It is often attractive to those who have had the strictest of upbringings, who display the greatest guilt about themselves and how they should conduct their behaviour in society. They are, indeed, guilty. Guilty of stealing from the poor. Guilty of creating wars and famines. They are responsible for murder and they come here to find a kind of death, a release, a punishment… He is a little incoherent. ‘They are the fathers of corruption!’ he concludes unsteadily.

Voorman giggles and turns to one of the floral displays. Lilies, lilies, lilies! I shall be a father to the lilies. I shall tend them as my own children. And when they die I shall bury them with proper ceremony and raise a stone to them and put more lilies upon it so that the scent of the living shall mingle with the smell of the dead. I know where my responsibilities lie. It is to the lilies!’

Rakanaspya appeals to us, but we are laughing too heartily at Voorman. The Russian puts his back against a pillar and pretends to listen to the orchestra as it plays a sort of gypsy dance. The General joins us, with Frau Schmetterling on his arm. His face is red; not wishing to show he is in any way exhausted he controls his breathing. Frau Schmetterling is pleased; she seems to have extracted some sort of promise from him. 'I will put young Captain Mencken in charge of the matter.’ He hands her a glass of champagne. He bows to Caroline Vacarescu, who continues to court him. Caroline is talking first to Clara and then, as the two women approach closer, to Alice and myself. She is quite drunk. ‘It was the chemistry between us,’ she says, ‘I could not help myself. I cannot explain. And yet it was failing. I know he felt this loss. The intensity was gone and without it one becomes very easily bored.’ She seems to be referring to Mueller. Clara listens patiently. ‘We tried to recapture passion which overpowers all constraint, all conscience, but it became hollow. Yet we were linked to each other, by virtue of what we had done to one another and to friends and strangers.’ Caroline looks at me suddenly, as if to test my response. ‘We were partners in crime. All I could do was watch as he seduced the others who would eventually all become linked to us. That was how we worked, how we affirmed the validity of our habits; and justified them. Was that so wrong? Is one reality any better than another?’

Rakanaspya is the only person with an answer. ‘One is sad’, he says, ‘the other reality you describe is not. Such power as Romanticism eventually destroys its proponents. It is always the case. And the process of destruction is neither normal nor bearable. It is merely sordid. Save yourself, while you have the chance. Never link your star to a m» as Mueller again.’

She becomes uncharacteristically sentimental. ‘You can never understand what someone like Mueller has. He radiated authority. He snapped his fingers at convention. He made fools of them all.’

‘And now he is dead,’ says Clara softly, trying to distract Caroline.

Voorman watches cynically as they move back through the salon. ‘I heard Fraulein Vacarescu is only at liberty now because Mueller was caught through information she supplied. Perhaps she found her own way of freeing herself from that chemistry.’

‘Somewhat radically.’ I do not believe him. Caroline seemed genuinely distressed by Mueller’s fate. I catch sight of a man I have often seen here in the evenings and whom I continue to confuse with the current Mayor. He is in fact the ex-Mayor of Mirenburg. He reels about the dance-floor in a kind of vulgar parody of the polka. Herr Kralek’s tie is lost. He has spilled food down his shirt-front. Dolly, alone, will dance with him. Almost every night he comes to visit the girls, to drink plum brandy and eat cream-cakes until dawn, when he returns to his wife, to make love to her, we have heard, until he is inevitably sick. His huge red neck ripples. His face is a featureless mass of purple. He usually displays resentment and elf-pity in all his tiniest gestures: demands respectful attention and receives instead the amiable kindness of the girls, which he mistakes for fear. He describes himself as an honest burgher, or rather he describes his opinions as those of an honest burgher: ‘Your honest burgher believes the Jews should all be expelled from the city proper,’ he will say. ‘Your honest brother isn’t happy with the idea of increased taxation.’ I remember one naive visitor asking him why, since he was so dently the voice of the respectable citizens of Mirenburg, they had signed a petition to have him removed from office. He said seriously that most of the signatures had been forgeries, Petition had been a plot of Zionist elements afraid of his power. ‘Where I could no longer exercise my ever watchful eye.’ He stumbles now and falls to the floor. Dolly attempts to help him up. Dolly’s fiancé is not here. Voorman tells Alice about another guest, a small, middle-aged journalist on the far side of the room. ‘He awoke in the hospital, still convinced he was at Frau Schmetterling’s, and immediately ordered one of the sisters to remove her underwear. She had obeyed with alacrity. It was four days before it dawned on him he had somehow been transferred from the brothel. The sister had no wish for him to leave. Being responsible to her superior to report his condition, she continued to insist on his poor rate of recovery. She kept him for another week until one of her colleagues demanded a share of the patient and was refused. The sister was reported and dismissed on the spot. She accompanied him back to the brothel where she stayed for a while as medical advisor to the girls.’ Alice is disbelieving. Voorman insists he is telling the absolute truth. The General confides to Frau Schmetterling, also on a medical matter: ‘My physician had the nerve to suggest mercury treatment, which means he thinks I have syphilis. But until the fool comes out with it directly and tells me I have the disease I shall carry on as I have always carried on. The responsibility is his, not mine.’

‘You have put the question to him?’ asks Frau Schmetterling.

‘In as many words.’

‘But not directly?’

‘Has he been direct with me, madam?’

The air is growing warm. It is difficult to breath. We move closer to the door. Wilke, perhaps the most dignified person here, with a look of self-possessed humility, is talking to Clara about Amsterdam, which they both know. He seems untroubled by the noise and laughter which surrounds him. His large hands move in a circle as he describes a certain district of the city and asks her, with his usual gravity, how long it is since she was there. ‘Doesn’t he look a marvellous brute,’ murmurs Alice as we go by. ‘Such a man, compared to the rest of these!’ I pretend to be insulted. ‘Perhaps I should introduce you?’ She gives me a look of mock-irritation: ‘Oh, don’t be silly. Someone like that has no real interest in women. He is either friends with them, or takes them quickly and leaves, or is faithful to his wife, if he has one. That’s obvious to me, even at my age!’ How many of these observations has she received from her mother?

I am again unsure why Alice should find me attractive. Is it a certain weakness which makes me more easily controlled, or less inclined to go my own way when it suits me? I have no idea. I look around at the crowded salon. How could I have thought that this was normality? We are all crazed. We are all in Hell. I stare at every face. There are only two women here I have not fucked. One of them is Frau Schmetterling herself. The other is Lady Cromach. She and Princess Poliakoff also stand near the door. Lady Cromach chews on an olive. ‘Frau Schmetterling tells me that you write, Herr von Bek. Do you work for the Berlin journals?’ I shake my head. ‘I am a dilettante, Lady Cromach. I do not know enough about life to be able to write with any authority, and I am, moreover, horribly lazy.’

‘Is that why you prefer to stay in a place like this when you travel?’

Princess Poliakoff snorts, saying something coarse to Alice who begins to giggle. I continue to speak to the English woman. ‘There are few houses as elegant as this and few which have such excellent ladies. I’m sure you know that most whores have a dislike of men and a crude sort of self-involvement which makes them very dull. How can one possibly be aroused very often or very satisfactorily by a dull woman?’

‘I find men much duller than most women,’ she says.

‘I am inclined to agree with you. And the dullest of all men are German, eh?’

‘They have their points. What they lack in imagination they make up for in cleanliness. I nearly married one, when I was a girl. And at least they are not as boring as Frenchmen, who seem to believe their attractiveness is in direct proportion to their vanity. I blame their mothers. And Germany is so modern! Though, as you suggest, a little on the tame side. When were you last in Berlin?’

‘Several years ago. My family is content for me to travel.’

‘An embarrassment of niggers, eh?’

‘Quite so.’

Princess Poliakoff, her hands on Alice, tells my girl a story she heard about the de Polignac circle (she had a brief affair with de Polignac which ended with neither woman speaking to the other for over a year) and some female composer in love with the Singer, as she says, not the Salon. She continues on this theme of gossip by suggesting that there are now so many homosexuals of both kinds in Paris the city will be ‘quite depopulated in another quarter-of-a-century’. She speaks to Alice as if she, the Princess, has perfectly conventional sexual preferances. Homosexuals are referred to as ‘they’. I find her wit without much substance and let her continue to entertain Alice, who is thirsty for scandal.

I chat to Lady Cromach until we are joined by Clara. The women are friendly. This is a relief to me, though I do not know why. The five of us drift towards the dais to listen to the orchestra playing reasonable Chopin. The more athletic dancers have subsided. ‘It seemed to me earlier, this evening,’ Clara links her arm in mine, 'that we were all dead; that Mirenburg was destroyed and that we were ghosts dancing in the ruins. You’re looking tired, Ricky. Would you care to borrow my little box. It might revive you.’ I thank her, but refuse. ‘I am trying to restore my sense of perspective, Rose, dear.’ She finds this funny. ‘You have improved your relations with the child.’

‘We have found a balance, I think. I was restraining her too much. And please don’t call her that, Clara. She is more grown-up than she seems.’ Clara draws in her lips for a second. I wonder how I have angered her. ‘I apologise,’ she says. ‘However, my offer remains, if you need a restorative.’ She begins to talk to Lady Cromach. She is particularly fascinated by the Derby and whether the Prince of Wales’s horses are always allowed to win. These girls. Their soft bodies brush against me; they smell so wonderful. They have all been mine, most of them in the space of a few days. And they have been

Alice’s. I hesitate in my rapture. My mood alters radically. We are in danger of losing what is individual to us. Alice has the over-animated, slightly guarded look she reserves for people who make her nervous. Princess Poliakoff holds her arm, hugs her shoulders, whispers in her ear and Alice laughs. Lady Cromach and Clara move to one side to continue their conversation. But I am in no mood to rescue Alice yet, so I take Natalia onto the dance-floor for a mazurka. We dance well together. It is strange, however, how trapped I feel here sometimes; I felt more secure in Rosenstrasse when I was not a resident. Natalia laughs and lifts in my arms like a happy gibbon.

When I return to my ladies I discover that Diana Cromach has rescued Alice. They are talking seriously. Alice nods a great deal and smiles at the older woman. Lady Cromach is deliberately setting out to charm her. I relish the notion of an amorous liaison between them. Alice catches my eye. We exchange signals. If it happens I shall not mind at all: it is the best route through to Lady Cromach, who excites my imagination and my lust. I pause beside them for a few moments; then, making my own decision, I leave them to it. I chat to Block, who complains it will be ‘months before I can visit Vienna again’. At about two o’clock in the morning I am approached by a furious Princess Poliakoff who wants to know if I have seen Diana Cromach and ‘that disgusting little cousin of yours’.

They have escaped the salon. I feel a thrill of curious pleasure, deny all knowledge, and pretend to be utterly disconcerted.

I spend the night in Clara’s bed, fucking with a lusty carelessness I have not experienced for a year. It is so easy to summon the recollection of that delicious ambience, knowing my Alice and her beautiful English writer were enjoying each other to the full; that Princess Poliakoff fumed alone, while I relaxed in the arms of a tolerant Rose. I fall back on my pillows to smoke a cigarette, to relive the wonderful happiness I knew. How can I possibly relish it so much when I completely failed to anticipate the disaster to follow? Perhaps that night was a kind of apotheosis; my last true moment of happiness. The gladioli which Papadakis brought are already beginning to discolour at the edges; the leaves have streaks of brownish yellow in them, yet they are still beautiful in their pinks and delicate oranges, their blues and mauves and their deep scarlet. The carnations give off the richest scent. I lie here, resting from heady sensations. I have some pain, mostly in my groin but also, strangely, in my nipples, and my back hurts; but this is nothing more than old age. I had once hoped medical science would progress so swiftly I might expect to outlive the twentieth century, which I perceive as an insane intermediary period between one rational age and another; the Great War is over, but they fight in Spain. And Russia must soon begin another conflict; it is almost her certain destiny. One would need money for such medicine, even if it existed, and my capital shrinks; I have even less than Papadakis fears. My will, when I die, shall reveal a pittance and the name of the chief beneficiary will be unknown to anyone. I doubt that she still lives. Mirenburg has succeeded, for the moment, in restoring her balance. Clara and I take an early-morning stroll. I am anxious to demonstrate my approval of Alice and Lady Cromach and have no intention of seeking them out, at least until lunch-time. I can be certain Princess Poliakoff will make some kind of scene and it would be best for me if I were not involved. ‘Let the vixen fight it out amongst themselves,’ I think. In heavy coats (mine is borrowed) Clara and I stand beside the river. A thin pillar of steam comes from somewhere on the other side. A factory in the Moravia sounds its siren; cans clank as a milkman’s wagon turns the corner, its wheels squeaking, the hooves of its horse plodding softly on the cobbles: the mingled smell of milk and a horse recently out of the stable brings a reminder of childhood safety. Then the milkman, crouched like a white hare on the high seat, gives voice: ‘Fresh milk!’ and his bell begins to clang. We stop him and buy a cup, which we share. It is warm and soothing. ‘There must still be cows somewhere,’ says Rose. Neither of us has any desire to return to the brothel. ‘Where now, your Lordship?’ We go towards the ornamental lake in the Botanical Gardens. Our breath creates clouds around our heads, like ectoplasm. The Gardens are as neatly kept as they ever were, with no evidence of damage, although for some reason soldiers guard the great hothouses. They salute us as we pass. We walk along the gravelled main avenue, between marble statues of nameless heroes, until we reach the lake, which is flanked by willows, poplars and cypresses. There is a brownish scum on the surface. Water-birds make trails in it as they swim listlessly about, occasionally diving into the purer water beneath. Clara sniffs. ‘It’s becoming stagnant,’ she remarks. ‘It looks so foul and smells so good to me. Why should it remind me of being a little girl?’ We stroll through the artificial peace. On the other side of the Gardens we enter Baudessinstrasse. Rather than mount the Mladota Steps we take winding Uhrmacherstrasse, with its shops and bourgeois houses; the street progresses slowly up the hill, following the curve of old roads which led to Castle and Cathedral when Mirenburg was young. There is a clapping noise. I mistake it at first for horses; then down the street towards us at a rapid trot come soldiers with shouldered rifles. The troop surrounds a collection of civilians wearing either a defeated or a defiant air. Not a few are hatless, as if they have been seized from their beds or captured while attempting flight. ‘Who are your prisoners?’ I call to the troubled young captain leading the party. ‘Looters and profiteers,’ he says curtly. The majority look ordinary enough to me: chiefly working-class and lower middle-class people from many walks of life. ‘They are taking this very seriously,’ says Clara. She indicates one of the recently-issued notices pinned to a tree. It threatens punishments and offers rewards and is signed by General von Landoff, ‘Military Governor of Mirenburg for the Duration of Hostilities’. Up beyond the Hussite Square we come upon ruins. ‘Oh,’ says Rose, 'that’s where my milliner used to live. I hope she’s not hurt.’ Scaffolding is already erected around some of the wounded buildings and workmen attempt to make good the damage done by Holzhammer’s cannon. ‘Do you want to find out?’ I ask her. We visit some local shops, learning that Frau Schwartz has already left the city, to stay with relatives in Tarndoff. We emerge from a little toy-shop in time to see an army band go by, all bugles and fifes, pompous in blue and red, in gold and silver braid. The soldiers are closely followed by about forty young men in badly-fitting uniforms wobbling on bicycles. I have read about them. They are the newly-formed ‘bicycle volunteers’. The cycling-clubs of Mirenburg have joined up en masse. Things begin to take on a comfortably comic aspect. I for one am rather happy that all motor vehicles have been requisitioned for military use. The streets are far quieter than usual. In the coffee-houses the students display a new patriotism and drink to the death of Franz-Josef, speak of an alliance with the ‘Empire of the Slavs’ and go off to apply for commissions in the army. Exiles enjoy a greater sense of freedom since the Austrian secret policemen have been arrested. Schemes for defence, counter-attack and means of involving the Great Powers in the Waldenstein Question are noisily discussed at length. The Bourse continues to pretend it is trading. Shops have re-opened everywhere. Barricades have been removed, shutters thrown back. Fancy foods have been bought by the ton from grocers whose shelves are virtually empty; nothing can be replaced. Warehouses have been stripped. Boats on the river rock in silent moorings; there is stillness in the market-places and people bargain, when they bargain, in secretive voices. The railway stations are deserted. Empty trains stand at empty platforms and a few hopeful creatures read notices of cancellations or rap hopelessly on the shutters of ticket-offices. Pigeons and starlings are noisy in the great, hollow roofs; the dusty locomotives are covered with bird-droppings. Railway workers lean against the trains, smoking and chatting, adjusting useless watches. Mirenburg’s turrets and gables have turned pale in the winter light; she is shocked and vague, like a cripple not yet come to terms with the loss of a limb. The Kasimirsky Palace is heavily-guarded. Voices of soldiers are loud in the air. Guns are wheeled up

Walls are continuously fortified. People stand in small crowds near the Central Post Office, hoping to learn that the telegraph has been restored. Everywhere officers move groups from place to place, dissipate gatherings, oversee requisitioned carts of food and raw materials, or stop individuals and inspect their new identity cards. Alice is now officially a Danish national. I have already explained to her how useful this will be in disguising our trail to Paris. At times of crisis it is easier to change one’s name and background than it is to stroll uninterrupted in a park. Detachments of cavalry move slowly through Little Bohemia to discourage anti-Semitic gangs who have already tried to burn the Great Synagogue. Mirenburg is no Warsaw or Odessa and it would be a smirch on her honour if she tolerated such uncivilised behaviour. This official protection, of course, enables citizens sympathetic to Holzhammer to claim that Prince Badehoff-Krasny supports the interests of the financiers and foreign bankers. ‘There will be no scapegoats,’ General von Landoff has promised. ‘Only those guilty of profiting from the general misery will be punished.’ The army issues orders on every aspect of daily life, from hygiene to the price offish. ‘The poor have never been so protected,’ observes Clara. ‘Is this Socialism?’ We pass the Liverpool. It has been repaired. It might never have been damaged. ‘By next spring,’ I say, ‘Mirenburg will be gayer and lovelier than ever. Look how wonderfully Paris recovered. The Prussians and the Communards between them should be praised. We’ll scarcely remember any of this.’ I was not born, of course, in ’71, but I visited the city in ’86, when I was fourteen, and was impressed by its beauty, though I prefer the denser texture of Mirenburg.

Clara insists we visit the Art Museum ‘to look at the Fragonards.’ But half the museum is closed and the pictures are being crated. We glimpse a few Impressionists before we are asked to leave. I am infected, however, by Clara’s enthusiasm. She is familiar with so many of the names. I have never known a whore like her. Few women have a genuine relish for Art. ‘You could teach me so much,’ I say. ‘You are the best governess in the world.’ Appreciating the double-entendre she laughs heartily as we descend the steps. ‘Let’s have lunch out.’ I am perfectly willing to agree. Half the dishes listed on the Restaurant Prunier’s menu are ‘unavailable’. Soups and sauces seem thinner than usual. We make the best of it, congratulating ourselves on our good fortune in being fed by Frau Schmetterling and her cook. ‘You seem confident today,’ Clara declares as we leave the restaurant. ‘Even happy. Like a little boy on holiday from school. Aren’t you worried about your Alice? Don’t you anticipate some sort of awful scene?’ I shake my head. ‘I have designs on Lady Cromach myself. Alice will be only too willing to share her new pleasure with me. She owes me that.’

‘And Lady Cromach? What will she say?’

‘Lady Cromach finds me attractive. I suspect Alice is her passport to me.’

Clara shakes her head. ‘You people are such predators! I am amazed by you. It must be a habit of mind, and perhaps of money. Do you inherit it, I wonder?’

‘I am in love, Clara. There are different expressions of love. You can accept that, can’t you? What a whore will do for her pimp, I will do for Alice and Alice for me. It is the noblest kind of self-sacrifice, and brings pleasure to so many!’

‘I’m not sure,’ she says, ‘that your kind of love is within even my experience.’ She pats my arm to show she is not condemning me. ‘We had better get back.’

As we arrive on the steps of Rosenstrasse there is an old woman there, already ringing the bell. Clara knows her as Frau Czardak. She is withered to the colour of pemmican, yet her long double-jointed fingers are supple and flexible, for they turn cards all day. She is in great demand with the girls who, with so little emotional security in their lives, look to superstition to offer them an interpretation and analysis of the world. The abstract and the metaphysical are frequently preferred by prisoners of almost any kind, since it is usually the fear ot ordinary reality which leads them to their condition in the first place. ‘And how soon will the Germans come to our relief’

‘Frau Czardak?’ asks Clara. ‘Have you seen it in the cards?’

‘In the wax. In the wax,’ says the old woman cryptically as she proceeds ahead of us. She is greeted by Trudi who directs her to Frau Schmetterling’s kitchen. Through the open doors of the salon we see porters still clearing up. Maids sweep and dust. Great baskets of used glasses are carried down. ‘Mister’ supervises it all with the grim eye of a well-trained guard-dog. He might even snap at my heels if I try to interfere with the ritual. He looks impassively at an approaching porter. The man drags a reluctant maid, apparently his wife, who has up to that point been dusting. ‘She refuses to visit the dentist. Look!’ The porter forces her jaws apart to reveal her blackened, broken teeth, while she glares up at him. ‘Does any man—any human being—have to live with that? She disgusts me. She has the habits of a wild-beast.’ Clara and I pause to enjoy this scene. He sees us and appeals to us. ‘In bed, when I require my rights, she bites me—with those horrible fangs! She could poison me. I could die. So what’s wrong with wanting to leave her if she won’t improve herself? Am I to remain chained to a subhuman because in my youth I thought her habits cureable? I support her, don’t I? I find her good jobs, too, like this one. But I don’t have to live in the same house with her!’ He turns back to ‘Mister’ who blinks once. ‘Do I?’ At this his wife snarls at him and wrenches herself away. He throws up his hands and looks to us again for sympathy. ‘You’re laughing at me. You don’t care! But this is my life! This is my whole life. I don’t believe I shall have another. I am desperate. I am married to a beast and therefore I receive no respect. It is not funny. It is a tragedy.’ His wife hisses at him and tries to bite his arm. Unable to contain our laughter we move on towards the stairs to find Frau Schmetterling confronting us. ‘Ricky, you must do something. Your girl and Lady Diana.’ She drops her voice. ‘They’ve locked themselves in your room. Princess Poliakoff has threatened everything from murder to the Law, and now she’s in her room, storming about and breaking things. She had Renee with her last night. The poor child’s black and blue. I’ve had to make it plain to Princess Poliakoff what I think.

You may stay, Ricky, but if your friend causes trouble, she must go. In any other circumstances you would all be out, immediately.’ She looks frantic. ‘I hate trouble. The ambience is so important. I expect people to behave like ladies and gentlemen. You’ve always been so good, Ricky. But this child!’ She pauses, blocking our path up the stairs. ‘Will you do something?’

‘Princess Poliakoff is an hysterical trouble-maker, dear madame, as you yourself must know.’

‘You’re the man. You must sort it out.’ She is firm. ‘And before this evening, too,’ she adds as we pass.

‘What am I to do?’ I say to Clara. ‘Challenge Princess Poliakoff to a duel?’

‘If you’re to challenge anyone, it should be Lady Cromach,’ Clara is weary of this.

I smile. ‘Unfortunately, it is not Lady Cromach who apes the male. What a difficult situation, my darling Rose.’

‘And one which your darling Rose will have nothing to do with,’ she says. ‘I am entirely on Frau Schmetterling’s side. It is up to you to settle matters quickly and quietly. At times like these, Ricky, the atmosphere of the house is even more important. Your intrigues and squabbles could drive customers away.’

‘I’ll talk to Princess Poliakoff,’ I promise. And I walk directly to the Lesbian’s room at the end of the second landing.

Although it is cold, Princess Poliakoff has opened a window. The room is finished in a sort of Louis XIV style, very much at odds with her own taste. She stands shivering by the gilded fireplace wearing a full set of masculine evening dress. The hat is on the mantelpiece near her hand which rests there, holding a cigarette. Her hair has been pinned and flattened. There is an expression of suppressed agony on her aquiline face. She is genuinely distressed. I have never been impressed by her in this way before. She looks older than her forty or so years. She refuses to appeal to me. ‘What a strange pair of cuckolds we make, Ricky.’ Since I have acquiesed in this adventure, albeit silently, I cannot feel genuine sympathy that sympathy of echoed self-pity. ‘It’s very unexpected,’ I say. Then, because it will suit me, I try to pretend anger. ‘I thought you had your eye on her, but I never guessed… I cross to the window and look down into Rosenstrasse. It is already growing dark. An old woman with a dog on a lead walks slowly towards the archway on the opposite side of the street. ‘Men never notice,’ she says. Women will always say that. What they actually observe is that men frequently do not comment. I am relieved, at least, that she has failed to blame me for the business. I take advantage of her need to see me as a fellow sufferer. ‘What are we to do about them?’ she wants to know. I suggest that perhaps they will see reason. It can all be cleared up in a few minutes if we are careful to reduce the tension. She is horribly distressed. ‘I love Diana deeply. But as for reason, I sometimes think the very word is meaningless to her.’ This suggests she has already tried to persuade her lover to have nothing to do with Alice. ‘She is a cruel and heartless woman. It’s up to you—up to you, Ricky—to remove that little wanton from this house.’ I tell her I have given the idea consideration, but there is nowhere to go. ‘There is Stefanik’s balloon,’ she says. ‘He’s already offered to help Diana escape. You could use it instead.’

‘It’s an offer he makes to every woman he desires. It’s neither a possibility nor a danger.’

‘You didn’t have a nigger at all, did you?’ She knocks the hat, spasmodically, with her hand. ‘Why were you lying to me?’

‘Oh,’ I shrug, ‘for privacy.’

‘Because you thought I’d try to take her away from you? There’s an irony.’ She fits another cigarette into her holder. Her hands continue to shake.

I frown, pretending to consider the problem.

‘Well?’ she says.

Til see if they’ll speak to me. But you must be patient. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’

‘Please,’ she says. ‘This is unbearable. I’m suicidal.’

I leave her and go up to our rooms, knocking softly on the door. ‘It’s me, Alex. Could you let me in? I’d like to change my clothes.’ I keep my voice as light as I can. She—or more likely Lady Cromach—will be suspecting a ploy. Anything I say will seem like an excuse to them. Their curiosity or their tension or their high spirits are all that will decide them. There is some movement from within. Eventually Alexandra opens the door and I enter. She is wearing her Japanese kimono. She kisses me quickly and grins to involve me, to placate me. ‘Have you been all right?’ She smells of some new perfume. The door to the bedroom is closed. ‘Yes, thanks,’ I say. ‘And you?’

‘Wonderful.’ She pushes at her messy hair. ‘I’d have told you, only we couldn’t ruin our chances. We had to act quickly. That witch has been hammering on the door for half the night and most of the morning. What a harpy, eh? Have you seen her?’

‘She’s calmed down.’ I go directly to the bedroom and open the door. Lady Cromach is in bed. She looks offended, then flushes like a travelling salesmen caught with the farmer’s daughter. ‘Good afternoon, Lady Cromach. I’m sorry to disturb you. I thought, since lunch-time has come and gone…’

She recovers herself. I can almost see her controlling her colour. She drops her head a little and looks up at me, half-smiling. ‘Of course. We have been thoughtless.’

‘Understandable, in the circumstances.’ From the wardrobe I pick out a shirt and underclothes.

‘You have been sailing under false colours.’ She is not accusatory. ‘How unkindly you misled the Princess. You know she loves proof of the most extravagantly unlikely gossip. Is she all right, do you know?’

I seat myself heavily on the bed and stare into her glowing face. ‘She says she is suicidal. That she loves you. She seems very distracted.’ The bed reeks of their love-making. I fee’ almost faint.

‘She won’t kill herself.’ Lady Cromach settles back in my pillows. ‘She’d be more likely to kill one of us. The Princess can’t bear to be thwarted.’

‘Neither can I.’

She puts a hand on mine. ‘But you have not been. Have you?’ The sheet falls away from her shoulders. She is lovely, like a young boy. ‘Alice tells me you are a stranger to sexual jealousy.’

‘I am becoming more familiar with it.’

She accepts the flattery. Alice enters to stand looking at us, like a melodrama child which has affected a reconciliation between its parents. She is almost smug. I laugh and ask her to light me a cigarette. She obeys with cheerful alacrity, placing an ashtray beside me. Lady Cromach’s hand has not left mine. ‘Are you trying to mollify me, Lady Cromach? Or do you plan to include me in this seduction?’

‘You’re straightforward,’ the says.

‘Perhaps it’s the atmosphere of this place. Perhaps it is the fact that we may all soon be blown to bits.’ I remove my jacket, then my waistcoat. Alice takes them from me. ‘I’ll bring some champagne,’ she says. Lady Cromach’s eyes have narrowed and her breathing has become rapid. A nerve twitches in her neck. ‘Champagne,’ she says. ‘What else did the Princess have to tell you?’

‘Very little.’

Alice returns with a tray of champagne and glasses. She puts the tray on the little bedside table and curls up beside Lady Cromach. ‘She must have yelled herself hoarse!’

‘I’ve promised to try to reason with you and then report back to her.’ I accept the cold glass.

‘And are you reasoning now?’ Lady Cromach wants to know.

‘In my own fashion. Or perhaps I’m bargaining.’

‘You wish me to give Alexandra up?’

‘You know I’m not so rigid. I have told her I will not object to her sleeping with other women, though I draw the line at other men. I’d like it understood, though, that my feelings must take priority with Alexandra.’

‘That’s surely up to Alexandra.’ Lady Cromach raises an eyebrow at my girl.

Alice says in a small voice: ‘I’ll do what everyone thinks best.’ Neither Lady Diana nor myself are even briefly convinced. ‘I’m sure you will,’ says Lady Cromach, fondling her head. ‘Oh, well, I think it can all be arranged satisfactorily, Herr von Bek. This would not be the first time, eh?’ We toast one another with our glasses.

Later I remark to Lady Cromach that she has one of the loveliest bodies I have known. It is like fucking a supple youth with a cunt. It is a rare pleasure. ‘You are a pretty rare pleasure for me,’ she responds sardonically. I get dressed. We have agreed I should pretend to Princess Poliakoff that I am persuading the women the affair is not possible. I will hint at my ability to blackmail one or both of them. But when I get to her rooms Princess Poliakoff has vanished. A maid at work on the stairs says she saw her go out half-an-hour ago. Downstairs, Trudi says the Princess left with a small hand-bag, in a cab. She did not say where she was going. Relieved at this, I return to my women. ‘It’s almost too good to be true.’

‘She has her pride,’ says Diana thoughtfully. ‘But she also has a taste for revenge.’

I know. She is probably scheming vengeance in one of the empty hotels near the station. She is certainly not dead or planning to die. I clamber into bed. Later tonight I will sleep in Clara’s room. In the morning we shall go to breakfast with Alice and Diana. There will be a slightly formal atmosphere until Clara produces her cocaine. Outside large flakes of snow will fall over Frau Schmetterling’s garden. Alice will clap her hands. ‘It’s going to be the most marvellous Christmas!’

The next weeks at Rosenstrasse will be the happiest I shall ever experience. The intimacy between Alice, Rose, Diana and myself will grow. The affection will take on the nature of a family’s and I shall fall cheerfully into my charming younger brother, ready for any sport, undemandingly cooperative. Who could fail to love such a man? We will scarcely notice the food growing poorer and sparser, or the brothel beginning to assume a run-down look. Frau Schmetterling, who will have taken charge of our rations and seen to it that doors and windows are properly barricaded, will not be quite so maternally self-possessed as usual. More and more young officers will attend the salon, and fewer civilians. One officer, young Captain Adolf Mencken, is now resident here. The brothel is an official telephone post.

The snow heals the scars on the city, softening the outlines of the fortifications, muting the sounds of distress. Mirenburg is visibly beginning to starve. There is no word from Germany. Holzhammer has strengthened his encirclement. The dribble of water in the river is brackish and filthy and reveals all kinds of horrors. These, too, the snow will cover. Sometimes in my imagination the brothel in Rosenstrasse will seem to be the only building still standing; the only security in a desolate and mutilated world. But then too often I will begin to notice the reality, the threadbare quality of the deception. Frau Schmetterling maintains it by her will alone. She once leaned easily on her cushions, controlling a universe of comfort, maintaining by moral strength and skill an illusion of absolute sanctuary, but now the effort is visibly draining her. ‘Mister’ has become more solicitous; her chow dogs can scarcely summon the energy to bark at the clients. She still dusts every piece of china in her vast dresser. Mirenburg is hungry. The meals at the brothel remain reasonable. We eat once a day. Nobody asks where ‘Mister’ finds his supplies. Nobody asks where the flowers come from.

We move, all four of us, in a web of reference where our needs and attitudes are the only ones worth considering. Alice, of course, is trapped in this more thoroughly than the rest, who at least know on one level that what they are doing can ultimately be self-destructive: we have conspired and chosen, she has merely accepted. Our games, our fantasies, our rituals become increasingly elaborate and abstract, yet we congratulate ourselves that they are ‘humane’. So they are, I suppose, in this private world, and we would be impatient if we were forced to consider them in any different context. I am a woman amongst women; my perfume is their perfume; we share our clothes, our jewellery, our identities. Memory is floating scarlets and pinks shading into yellow and grey, the taste of sex, the sensation of being forever relaxed, forever in a state of heightened sensuality, forever alive. I can smell this paper: it has an old dusty odour, and the ink is bitter in my nostrils. After the War I spent a few months in Algeria, much of this time in a whorehouse having some of the atmosphere of Frau Schmetterling’s, although it was a much rougher place. It was frequented by certain elements of the French Army. One of the girls, a pretty redheaded Russian called Marya, whose parents had been killed by the Bolsheviks and who had come here from Yalta, was dying by the hour. She was consumptive. She had a little cubicle off the main floor, where we sat on cushions and smoked hashish. On a certain night she had announced that it was ‘free tonight, gentlemen’.

One by one the customers went to her as she called for champagne—a bottle with every man—standing in her door in a pink chemise which had brownish stains on it, challenging them to come, while the blood flowed down her lovely chin, and her delicate shoulders and beautiful little breasts shook as she coughed. ‘This is a farewell performance.’ But gradually even the coarsest of the soldiers began to hesitate and look to one another in the hope that someone would put a stop to the matter. The proprietor of the brothel, a half-Arab who wore a fez and a European suit, remained expressionless, watching Marya, watching the customers, perhaps curious himself to see how far it could all go. The soldiers took up their bottles of champagne and went into her cubicle, but none went very willingly or stayed very long. I still do not know why they went: I like to think it was out of respect for a dying and desperate girl. Perhaps she thought their bodies would bring her renewed life, or perhaps she hoped they would kill her. She died two days later, quietly, full of hashish.

Mirenburg huddles under the snow as if in a mixture of fear and pride. Her bells continue to chime; her lovely churches are crowded every day. There are no birds here now. They have all been caught and eaten. The factories are closed and every able-bodied man marches on the walls as part of his militia’s duty. Holzhammer’s armour squats not a quarter of a mile from our abandoned trenches on the other side of an expanse of almost unbroken snow. We have heard that German and Austrian diplomats quarrel over the Waldenstein Question but no decision has yet been reached.

We expect the cannon to begin to fire again soon. Van Geest is still wearing his blanket-jacket. He talks to me one afternoon as we sit side by side on a couch in the gloom of the salon. ‘I continue to associate this place with the funeral parlour where we took my mother. Isn’t that peculiar? Yet the atmosphere seems exactly the same to me. It always has. Even before the siege began. It could be the dark drapery and the smell of incense. The potted palms. Is that all? The cause of the association is beyond me.’ He sighs and lights his cigar. ‘But I am comfortable here.’ Over on the other side of the room, in the half-light, Frau Schmetterling sits at the piano, playing some mindless German song. As I get up to leave I hear a commotion in the vestibule and Therese comes storming in pointing behind her at the same porter who, a few weeks ago, complained about his wife’s teeth. Therese is wearing a feather dressing-gown and mules. Only since the Siege have the girls been allowed to dress like this in public. She has lost all appearance of refinement. Her harsh gutter-Berlin rings out suddenly across the room. ‘He’s eaten Tiger! The horrible old bastard’s eaten the cat!’ Frau Schmetterling hurries from the piano. ‘Not so loud, dear. What’s the matter?’ Therese points again. ‘The cat. He said it was a rabbit.’ She rounds on the man. ‘And he offered me some if I’d doodle him. For a rabbit leg! Or a cat’s leg, as it turned out. He’s disgusting. Old swine! I’d rather eat his damned leg. Tiger was my only real friend.’ She begins to weep, every so often pausing to glare at the bewildered porter. All he can say is: ‘It wasn’t Tiger. Somebody else got Tiger.’ Frau Schmetterling tells him he is dismissed.

‘One should try to draw the line at cats.’ Captain Mencken, all shaded eyes, colourless hair and sandy uniform, comes up to us and borrows a light from Van Geest. ‘They are eating worse in the Moravia and Little Bohemia, I hear.’ He looks down on us through smoked glasses, a sober lemur.

People seem to have become obsessed with what should and what should not be eaten. Yesterday I was in the kitchen while Frau Schmetterling discussed menus with her cook. Herr Ulric has always impressed me. He was a butcher in Steinbrucke twenty years ago, and he still retains something of the smell of the shambles about his coarse and enormously gentle body. His hands, when at rest, lie upon his thighs as if they grip an axe and his eyes contain that familiar sad tenderness of a betrayer of lambs and ewes. His old calling proves useful again. Herr Ulric was amused by Frau Schmetterling’s insistence that the food be described simply as ‘meat’. He agreed. ‘So long as it isn’t described as prime. That nag was hardly the finest horse in the cavalry, even when she was young!’ Frau Schmetterling had nodded in that dismissive way she has when she does not wish to hear what is being said to her. Van Geest sighs. ‘I feel like one of those dark weeds which grows in the deep sea, which never observes the light of the sky, is never exposed to the air. I wave in fathomless currents. I am moved by profound, slow forces; I am never attacked; I give a hiding place to both predator and prey, yet I am scarcely aware of them and never affected by them. Is this power, do you think?’ Captain Mencken hands back the box of matches and looks to me for a reply, but I know Van Geest too well by now to bother to answer. Captain Mencken has little to do and frequently seems embarrassed to be here. He is courteous enough, but always distant. He is unhappy, he has confided to us, with a state of affairs in which our soldiers do battle with starving citizens in their own streets. There have been several terrible incidents. ‘We should take the offensive,’ he has said. ‘That’s my opinion. But we wait still for the Kaiser. And the Kaiser will not come. The only relief for Mirenburg depends on the actions of her soldiers. One good cavalry charge could take those positions. Or could have.’ Now he moves away from us.

‘The horses are growing too weak,’ he says. ‘Well, you know what’s happening to them.’

He goes to the boarded-up window as if he hopes he will get some glimpse of the enemy. ‘They’re starving us rather successfully, aren’t they?’ He is one of the few Mirenburger soldiers to have seen active service. Frau Schmetterling returns and settles at her piano. Rakanaspya and Count Belozerski enter, speaking in low Russian voices. The Count has grown a thin pointed beard, and both men have become increasingly serious; they spend all their time together and appear to be discussing metaphysics. Count Belozerski’s hair has been allowed to grow, too. It now touches his high fur collar, emphasising his Tartar blood and giving him a Mephistophelean appearance completely at odds with his behaviour, which remains amiably courteous. He has been to see Caroline Vacarescu once or twice, though she is determinedly in pursuit of a rather nervous and flattered Captain Mencken, while granting her favours most frequently to Rudolph Stefanik. She is playing several hands at once. We have heard nothing at all of Princess Poliakoff except a vague rumour she has escaped the city and thrown herself on the mercy of her ex-lover Holzhammer. I enquired at every hotel and boarding-house I was able to find. I still fear she has guessed my perfidy and might by now have discovered who Alice really is. She would betray me if she could. She would betray us all. In the Town Hall a day or so ago a fire had been especially prepared for an emergency meeting. The business people of Mirenburg were to meet General von Landoff and his staff to discuss the situation. The big mediaeval hall, with its gilded gargoyles and elaborate flags, was full of loud voices and tobacco smoke. A number of old men were in contentious discourse near the fireplace. Everyone still wore their overcoats. No member of the military staff had yet arrived and merchants and bankers continued to represent themselves as experts in the business of War. There were rumours of an emissary from Holzhammer, of new peace-terms which General von Landoff had dismissed out of hand as ‘quite impossible’. One iron-master joked that he had it on good authority that all women under twenty were to be given up to the Bulgarians. ‘My mistress was in tears when I got there last night. She knew that it was nonsense, of course, but was I suspect enjoying the melodrama. There is so little entertainment, these days. I told her the story was untrue but that I had made a private agreement with General von Landoff to give her up to his uses in return for my own safe-conduct.’ No-one there knew anything of the Princess Poliakoff. ‘You don’t believe you’re making sense, do you?’ says Papadakis, uncorking a bottle of Chambertin. ‘You’re being foolish. What are you writing about? The girl? Because I won’t listen any more, you’re writing it down. Is that it?’ Mirenburg is still alive. Her battlements have held off the Goth and the Hun and every empire Europe has known. ‘She is indestructible.’ Papadakis begins to pour the wine. ‘Let it breathe!’ I tell him. ‘Let me breathe. Let us all breathe! God! You stink of disease. You are putrefying before my eyes. I can smell you night and day!’ Clara joins me in the salon. She wears a sable coat, borrowed from Diana, and a matching muff and hat. We are going for one of our walks. Captain Mencken removes his smoked glasses and warns us to be cautious. His eyes have that pale, bloody look of dogs whose hair permanently covers their faces. ‘The amount of crime in the city is prodigious…’

We laugh at him as we step into the path which has been cleared through the snow. The dismissed porter is close behind us, grumbling that it has become impossible to please anybody these days. He goes towards Rauchgasse while we turn in the opposite direction, to Papensgasse and the Botanical Gardens. The guards have stamped paths all over the gardens and we follow them. The smell of burning wood comes from near the Tropical Plant House. The white smoke rising over the snow adds to the haze. The sky is the colour of new steel and from the Moravia a score of belfries begin to peal. The people on that side are mostly Catholic. ‘They pray four or five times a day now,’ says Clara. She wants to investigate the source of the smoke, but I hold her back. ‘It would be best not to find out what they are cooking,’ I say. ‘Have they become cannibals?’ She makes to go on. ‘There are rumours,’ I say. She shivers and her eyes brighten. ‘Oh!’ She tries to find a remark and fails. ‘How terrible,’ she says finally, in a small voice. ‘I wonder what would happen to me? Would they prefer to eat me or rape me, do you think?’ We take the turning for the ornamental lake. ‘Probably both,’ I say. Most of the trees are down. They have been used for firewood. The unbroken snow covers their stumps, however, so that it is still possible to pretend the Siege does not exist and all is as it was in September. I walk slowly, savouring the sense of peace. I am a little light-headed from hunger. In the distance glass buildings are heavy with snow. Every other outline seems black. There is a strong smell of urine from the lake. Clara holds her nose. ‘They must be using it as a cess-pit. I suppose they can’t empty the sewage into the river any more, though I don’t see what difference it makes.’ A soup-kitchen has been set up in the Lugnerhoff. The line of people, many of them well-dressed, stretches the length of Korkziehiergasse and goes out of sight around the corner. I see an old acquaintance, Herr Prezant the tobacconist, and stop to talk to him. ‘What’s the soup like?’ I ask him. ‘It gets thinner every day,’ he says, smiling. He is a grey ghost in astrakhan. ‘Soon it will be only water, but we shall still go on queuing for it. By that time we shall not have noticed. It’s as good a way as any of starving to death.’ He seems to be quite serious. ‘Relief will soon be here,’ I say. He is fatalistic: ‘There is nobody who would wish to help us in the current political climate. You must know that as well as I, Herr von Bek.’

‘I am optimistic by nature, Herr Prezant. There’s little point in being otherwise.’ He offers me his hand and I shake it. It is all bone; yellow with the stains of his calling. Then he turns back into the line and stands there, his shoulders straight, his fingers toying with the brim of his Homburg hat. ‘He is a brave little old fellow,’ says Clara. ‘But why are people so frequently passive in the face of misery and death? Have they been reconciled to it all their lives? So few of them seem surprised, let alone outraged. Wouldn’t you be angry?’

‘I would not be in his position,’ I tell her. ‘But if I were I should probably behave very similarly. One makes choices, until there are no further choices to make. Then one accepts the results. His choices have led him to that queue. As have his circumstances, too, of course. My circumstances will never lead me to make Herr Prezant’s choice. Let’s count our blessings, Rose, my love.’ There are no cabs. We must walk back. Black smoke floats towards the twilight. Fire has broken out in the Koenigsallee and has spread for several blocks. The hospital has been evacuated: the patients are lying on stretchers in the street until they can be removed to the Convent of the Poor Clares. The fire is said to be the work of incendiaries, of women patterning themselves after the communards of ’71 and deciding it would be better to burn Mirenburg to the ground than to let it fall into the hands of the besiegers. The blaze is soon under control and several suspected ‘petrolleuses’ have been arrested. A crowd visits the burning buildings to warm itself and to loot whatever food might have survived. A few shots are fired in the dusk. A far less passive crowd rushes up Falfnersallee towards the Mirov Palace and is met by a fusillade. In the confusion some field-guns are discharged. We reach Rosenstrasse at dark, barely in time for curfew. Captain Mencken peers at us through the pools of his spectacles. ‘You are safe, then?’ Clara asks him what is happening. He tells us Holzhammer’s agents have been creating dissension in the city. Those agents will soon be under arrest. I remark how hot it has become inside the house. Frau Schmetterling flusters through the door which leads down to the basement. ‘He intends to burn us all up!’ she says despairingly. ‘Please help. It is ‘Mister’ and Chagani!’ Captain Mencken and I go down to the furnace-room. The boiler is roaring so high it threatens to burst. Two men stand in the flickering darkness hurling log after log through its blinding mouth. ‘He will not listen!’ wails Frau Schmetterling. ‘He continues to cram in fuel. You would think he was in Hell already!’

‘Mister’ stops suddenly. He is panting. He signs for his friend Chagani to continue their work. He looks at us in surprise. He has an enthusiastic, boyish expression on his ruined face. He is sweating. ‘Every room in the house is at tropical heat,’ says Frau Schmetterling. Captain Mencken steps forward. ‘I think this will do. We are supposed to be preserving fuel.’ He speaks gently, even hesitantly. ‘There is no point now,’ says ‘Mister’. ‘Not now, sir. Why give them our firewood?’

‘You think Holzhammer has won?’

‘Holzhammer has won.’ For the first time Chagani speaks. He does not look at us, but he drops the log he has been carrying. I recognise him. He sometimes entertains the girls with his monkey and his mimicry. Muscular and yet without strength, Chagani was an acrobat who destroyed his own judgement through self-demand and a lack of faith in his partners. This evening he has decided to wear his red, spangled costume. He steps back towards the boiler-room’s outer door. The firelight shifts to silhouette him, frozen in loneliness, clinging to his pride as he might cling to the very sword which had killed him. ‘Holzhammer was won. His troops will be here by morning.’ In faded red and tarnished gold he stands stretching his calves, reaching back to a memory of his youth, obstinately continuing to identify the impatience he had then possessed with the subtler forms of optimism he has detected in others and yet been unable to comprehend. ‘That’s rubbish, Chagani,’ I say. ‘What on earth’s your game? Why have you alarmed ‘Mister’?’

Chagani laughs suddenly and springs into the depleted woodpile in the corner. He attempts a pirouette and lands on his back. The timber tumbles around him. He is still laughing. He is very drunk. ‘Mister’ goes to help him, his hands stretched. Frau Schmetterling says sharply: ‘You are not to listen to him. He’s always leading you into trouble. Why do you let him? Why do you get him the schnapps?’ She crosses to the boiler and with a long iron rod taps and turns and slides until the thing is burning at a normal level again. She whirls around with the rod in her hand. ‘Mister’ has aided Chagani to regain his feet. The ex-acrobat flexes his upper arms. He is not hurt. ‘I still know how to fall,’ he says. He glares at us. ‘Which is more than any of you do. Can’t you see it’s over for you? Your luck has failed.’ Frau Schmetterling threatens him with the black rod. He arches his back like a ballerina and, limping, allows ‘Mister’ to help him to the outer door. I watch him as he mounts the steps up to the garden. There are several cavalry-horses stabled there now. The cockatoos, the macaws, the parrot, all have gone, and there are no more orchids. Captain Mencken follows behind Chagani as the man is challenged by a guard. ‘It’s all right, Huyst.’ And ‘Mister’ looks after his departing friend before descending the steps and tugging something out of his shirt. It is a half-empty stone bottle. Frau Schmetterling takes it, shaking her head, and drops the rod with a clang to the dusty flagstones. Mencken and I return upstairs. ‘They are all going mad,’ he says. ‘It is hunger and alcohol, I suppose. Who can blame them?’

The four of us, out of choice, are dining most evenings off morphine, opium and cocaine. It is better than the food we have, and thanks to Clara the drugs are still plentiful. When we require warming, we drink old cognac. Wilke, summoned by a maid, stands at the top of the steps as we come back up. ‘I thought we were on fire,’ he says. ‘And that was shooting earlier, wasn’t it? I was asleep.’ His big, passive head is drowsy and his voice is furred. He wears a red and white dressing gown; his feet are bare. ‘What do you want me to do, chicken?’ He addressed Frau Schmetterling. ‘It is over,’ she says. ‘I am sorry you were woken up. ‘Mister’ lost control of the furnace.’

‘Do you want me to have a look at it?’ asks Wilke. ‘It is all right now,’ she says. ‘Go back to bed.’ She kisses him on the cheek as he turns obediently about. He is quite as loyal to her, I suspect, as ‘Mister’. They are a strange pair of children. ‘I thought the Bulgarians had arrived,’ he says, almost to himself, ‘and had set us on fire.’

‘Could Chagani have some word?’ I ask Captain Mencken. Behind his smoked glasses he is inscrutable. ‘Hardly!’ he says. ‘A man like that? It would take much more than a day for Holzhammer to break through into the city. It was rubbish. He was drunk as a pig. Drunk as a pig.’ I have sweat and grime all over my face. I go up to Clara’s room to bathe. A maid fills the tub for me. We are gasping from the heat. ‘Don’t touch the radiators,’ warns Clara. ‘I have already burned myself.’ She displays a red spot on the back of her hand. On her mirror she has laid out two thick lines of cocaine. ‘Have one of those,’ she says. ‘It will spoil my appetite for dinner,’ I tell her. ‘Then have both,’ she says with a laugh. She is wearing her Broderie Anglaise negligee. Her white body, with its firm breasts and big nipples, is beaded with perspiration. She sprays at herself with a cologne-bottle. ‘Ugh! Who could have expected this? That Chagani is mad. I’ve always said so. He hates the human race. He’ll burn us down, yet.’

‘Wilke thought the Bulgarians had arrived.’

‘He’s not the only one. We’re all on edge, Ricky, dear.’

After my bath I go to see my other ladies. They usually prefer to be together until mid-afternoon when they like to receive me. This arrangement suits Clara. She has her naps while I am away. Alice and Diana come to embrace me. They could almost be brother and sister. Twins. ‘Oh, those guns again,’ says Lady Cromach. ‘My nerves! Did you hear them?’

‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Why do men always say that to women and children?’ Diana shakes her head and leads me towards the bedroom. ‘And you seem so pleased with yourselves when you do it!’

‘Aha. Perhaps we’re talking to ourselves.’

‘Perhaps you are, my dear.’ Diana kisses me again. ‘There is a child in all of us sometimes, who cries and must be comforted.’

Alice follows behind us. She has her hands together on her stomach. Diana and I stretch ourselves on the bed but Alice continues to stand. ‘We’ve got to leave,’ she says. Our Alice is drawing attention to herself. She is looking a little fatter and, as a result, even lovelier than usual. Her skin’s lustre reminds me of pink pearls in the deep sea, still enlivened by the movement of the waters. Her hands press against glass. Behind the glass are shutters, nailed with boards on the outside, and only a few bars of yellow light shed by the houses opposite, enter through the gaps. Within the brothel we live almost entirely by artificial light. There is no more gas. Oil and candles are in short supply. She wears one of Clara’s grey silk dressing-gowns and the remains of last night’s theatrical make-up—we had turned her into a doll, a Coppelia. ‘This is wretched.’

‘There is absolutely nothing we can do, dear.’ Diana strokes the linen of my arm. ‘Where could we go?’ She looks at me.

‘They were shooting at civilians,’ I tell Alice. ‘It was a riot near the Mirov Palace. Clara and I were almost caught up in it, but it wasn’t really dangerous.’

‘What was Clara doing, letting you go out in that?’ says Alice. ‘Clara is a fool! Clara will get you killed. She looks for danger. She loves to be near death. It’s the way she’s made. You shouldn’t go along with her silly schemes.’

‘We were taking our usual stroll,’ I say mildly, looking to Diana for an explanation. Diana gets up and goes into the other room to find her playing cards. Alice has pinched her cheeks together and juts her red lips at me. It is the expression she usually employs when she pretends to know somebody else’s secret, or disbelieves a statement, or disapproves of an explanation. ‘Don’t do that,’ I say. ‘It makes you look ugly.’ I will do almost anything to take that particular expression off her face. If you’re frightened, then admit it. But you shouldn’t try to turn your fear onto somebody else. Clara doesn’t deserve that.’ She is for the first time, however, thoroughly unreachable. She will not respond. The realisation gives me a physical shock. ‘It isn’t fair,’ I add. But I am losing her. I can sense it. She needs me to give something which I do not have. I do not even know exactly what it is she wants. I would give it if I could. I hold back. Perhaps it is simply that she has used me up. Anything I say will be contrary to my interests. Alice is cold. ‘You have changed,’ she says. It is as if a judge has reached a verdict. ‘You used to be so gay.’ I am condemned and sentenced and still my crime is unknown to me. Diana returns. ‘Shall we all go down to dinner tonight? she says. She seems innocent. Has she been speaking about me to Alice? Or against Clara? Nobody could do that unless Alice wanted it.

‘Why not?’ I reply. ‘We’ll have Horsemeat Surprise. Or perhaps tonight it will be Pouf-Pouf stew.’ My joke falls flat. Alice cries: ‘Oh, my God!’ and begins to cry into her hands. Diana comforts her. Somehow I have compounded my crime.

‘I’m very sorry,’ I say.

‘It isn’t your fault.’ Diana is grim. ‘You’d better bring Clara here. This is getting out of proportion. At all costs we four must stick together.’ Alice looks up. Snails seem to have crawled across her caked face. ‘The pair of them are already against us. Can’t you see that, Diana?’ Lady Cromach puts on her dark dressing gown. ‘I’ll get Clara. You stay here with Ricky.’ As soon as she has left Alice sniffs and stops crying. She glares at me. She goes to her dressing table and begins to wipe the cosmetics from her face. She has become much more skilled with her clothes and her make-up. ‘We’ve got to get away from here, Ricky,’ she says. ‘We haven’t been trying properly. We’ll be like those Romans—those people in Pompei—still making love when the volcano went off. Diana and Clara must take their chances. You surely know of some means… ’ I am again shocked, both by her disloyalty and her volte-face. Why has she suddenly forgiven me? I am disturbed, yet flattered she should choose me as her conspirator against the others. ‘We’ve got to get to Paris, Ricky.’ The traces of tears are nearly gone. She begins to work on her hair, brushing rapidly. She leans into the mirror. ‘It would be pointless to take Clara with us. She has no breeding. Well, you can’t expect it from a whore, I suppose.’

I am angry on Clara’s behalf, yet to defend her would be to lose my child. Alice has fired her warning shot.

‘What about Diana?’ I ask.

‘She’s too unimaginative. You and I are the only ones with imagination, Ricky. It is our bond. Remember?’ She turns with a lovely little smile. ‘Twin souls?’

I laugh. I recognise her motives and her techniques but I can’t resist them. She is my muse, my alter-ego, my creation. ‘Let’s at least behave decently.’ I attempt to save something of my old standards. ‘There’s no need to condemn either of them just because we’re tired of them. Let’s just admit we want to get to Paris together.’

She is almost happy. She blows me a kiss from her reflection. ‘All right. That’s fair enough. What will you do?’

‘I’ll make enquiries. I know someone. There’s a chance.’. This is empty reassurance, of course. She must hope. She must pin that hope on me. She has given me an ultimatum. To lose her would be to lose myself.

‘I just want to be on our own again,’ she says. ‘In Paris. Or Vienna. Wherever you think. But we can’t stay here, Ricky. There are too many dangers. Too many awful memories. I want to start afresh. I want to be your wife, as you promised.’

I am enormously elated as she embraces me; I have had a last-minute reprieve. But there are conditions. We hear Clara and Diana coming back. She whispers: ‘Get us away.’ And she continues with her toilet. ‘She’s much better now,’ I say. ‘It was the shooting and the heat. We’re all relaxing again.’ I laugh. I look at the two women I intend to deceive. They seem merely pleased emotions have settled. I see no reason to feel guilt. It will simply be Alice and me again. We shall finish where we began. Nobody will have lost. There have been no bargains made. But I am already lost; I refuse to consider what I will receive in place of love; or what I shall win to replace the pain and the beauty of worshipping a woman rather than a child. I shall become a coward. The future threatens me and I refuse to acknowledge it. The moment is all that matters. I might have ended my days with affectionate memories and all I shall actually have will be a litany of petty revenges and self-pity. I will come to deceive all women as wilfully as I now plan to deceive myself. I will exploit their romance as mine was exploited. I know all this but I am compelled to continue. Alice has begun to sing that old familiar parting song; finding faults, compiling lists of supposed slights so that she might justify her next decision. And what she can turn against these two friends she can as easily turn against me. I am in that state of disbelief which can sometimes last for days or weeks before the fact of disaffection is accepted. I look away. When shall I be struck? In Paris? Before or after we are married? I will suffer that particular indignity. I will listen to lies about what we have done and distortions of the facts of our life together. I will not leave. I will not, as I should, let her sing that song alone. But all this knowledge is swamped by the tiniest hope that she will change: that what I see is not the truth.

Alexandra. You must not leave me. You must not change. From the triumph of eyes freshly-adult she will one day mock my misery. She will refuse the role which it will have suited her to play, which will no longer be useful to her. She will change her ambitions, but not her nature. I shall be hardly peripheral to her consideration when not long ago I should have been central. From a citadel of lace and velvet she will look down on a wretch. Now she flashes me a private smile. They are getting changed. They are chatting amongst themselves. They prepare themselves for the dinner. Then Clara and Diana leave me alone with Alice again. ‘I must have your guarantee,’ I tell her. ‘I must know you will not betray me.’ She hugs me. She kisses me warmly. ‘How could I betray you, darling Ricky? You are my master!’ I hold her to me, not daring to look at her face for fear I will see the deception too clearly. ‘It’s wrong to do this to Clara and Diana,’ I say. She pulls away from me. ‘That’s stupid. What do we owe them?’ I sit on the chair, my shoulders stooped. She offers me something in her gloved hand, palm outstretched as if to a pet. It is a little pill of opium. Wonderingly, I take it. She turns away. ‘You know, Ricky, that I have no conception of your ideas of morality sometimes. We see things so differently. I don’t plan to do any harm to either Diana or Clara. Do you think that?’

‘No’

‘I love them both. They are wonderful. But you and I have something special. What purpose would be served in blurting everything out? It can only cause trouble—and pain to others.’

‘I should have thought that we owed them—’

She comes to kneel beside me. ‘We owe them nothing. That is our freedom.’

I listen to her as a disciple might listen to a holy man; striving to perceive the wisdom, the new attitude, the truth of what she says.

‘They’re not like Poliakoff,’ she says. ‘They won’t hurt us.’

‘We ought to tell them.’

‘What’s the point?’

As I rise to my feet my legs are trembling. I cannot fathom the changes which have taken place in her strange, dreaming, greedy brain. I am as much at a loss for an explanation as if I attempted to analyse the perceptions and nature of a household pet. Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to be obedient and passive for as long as it suits her, to respond to whatever desires or signals one might display. But now I disguise my desires, for fear of losing her. Have I therefore lost her to someone who offers her clearer signals? To someone who represents what she calls ‘freedom’? At dinner I look suspiciously around the table, at the Russians, at Count Stefanik, at Caroline Vacarescu, even at honest Egon Wilke, chewing his food with as much relish as if it were the finest beef. And Alice is merry. Alice is the darling of the company. Everyone dotes on her. ‘You cheer us all up, my dear,’ says Frau Schmetterling. She has become much more tolerant of late. Will Frau Schmetterling somehow betray me? I am scarcely in control of myself, though I appear to be as relaxed and as good-tempered and as witty as always. And yet, has Clara taken on that peculiar, impressive dignity of an injured woman; that dignity which induces in any reasonably sensitive man a mixture of awe, guilt, respect, and sometimes envious anger? We drink too deeply. In bed together that night we tire easily and fall asleep. A terrible depression has overwhelmed me. The dream is lost. I am desperate to rediscover it. I get up from that tangle of women early and go to Clara’s room to sleep. I help myself to her cocaine. I look through her books and her musical scores and I cannot rid myself of the thought that I have resisted as heartily as has Clara the thought that she might love me and I her. This scarcely affects my obsession with Alice. I want it to be as it was. ‘In Paris,’ I murmur to myself. ‘It will come back in Paris.’ And then I ask myself: ‘What am I?’ I am corrupted and I am revelling in my corruption. I am the victim of my imagination, trapped in a terrible fantasy of my own devising. I am still awake when, at dawn, the Holzhammer guns begin to fire on Mirenburg. She trembles. She cries out. The shells blow up the Café Schmidt and flesh scatters into the morning air; the statues of St Varoslav and St Ormond fall in a haze of white dust, crashing onto the shattered slabs of masonry below. The Liberty apartments, the baroque and romanesque churches, the domes and the steeples, are falling one by one at first and then in their hundreds. Mirenburg, that city of all cities, is being murdered. She is being murdered. And here is Lady Cromach, startled and anxious, asking if I have seen Alice. Clara is behind her. Have I seen Alice? She cannot have left. But she has taken a coat, a hat. I go out to look for her. The shells are relentless. I can see them going past; I hear their wailing and their thunder. I know her family church, near Nussbaumhof. It is still standing, though most of the other buildings are flattened. I am in time to find her coming down the wide steps, dressed inadequately in a silk tea-gown and a summer cloak. The mysterious vulnerability of her face is emphasised by the stooped set of her shoulders, her nervous eyes, as she recognises me and comes towards me for a few paces before pausing and looking back at others also emerging from the white Gothic arch. ‘What were you looking for in there?’ I ask. She begins to shiver. I go up to her and put my own coat around her. ‘Comfort?’ she says. ‘Certainty? I don’t know.’ I try to lead her back to Rosenstrasse but she will not move. ‘It’s unlike you,’ I say. ‘What?’ she asks. ‘To risk so much danger.’ She frowns. ‘There wasn’t any. The guns started later.’ I smile, almost in relief. ‘I must leave you,’ she says. ‘I must leave you all. I must be free.’ I am sympathetic. ‘So you shall be. You can do what you like. But first we must escape Mirenburg. Get to Paris. Come.’

‘No.’ She stands firm. I act as if I am dealing with a child. ‘Very well.’ I lift my hat and return down the steps, feeling that I have somehow hurt her and myself at the same time. Her confusion is infectious. I stop and look back. She is staring at me from those blank eyes. She is staring. ‘Come along, Alexandra.’ I stretch out my hand. ‘I can no longer afford to indulge myself in this fantasy of youthful infatuation. Either you come with me or I shall abandon you.’

‘I want you to go.’

I return, one by one, up the steps. The shells are like a chorus of harpies all around us. ‘But what of me?’ I say. I am still hoping to appeal to her. ‘What shall I be left with?’

She looks at me almost with contempt. ‘Love and affection,’ she says.

I cannot recover myself. Mirenburg is being destroyed. All my romance is being taken from me at once and there is no one I can blame. This desolation is too complete. She shrugs and joins me. Through all the yelling and all the death we walk slowly home to Rosenstrasse. ‘You were lying to me,’ she says. ‘There is no means of getting to Paris.’

‘I will find a way,’ I promise. If only I can keep her with me, can get her free of all this terror, we can become calm again. She will love me again. She will know me for what I am, a decent, ordinary, kind-hearted man. In Rosenstrasse everyone is relieved to see us. Alice is put to bed. ‘It is exhaustion,’ says Lady Diana. ‘She is only a child. She’s in shock.’ For twenty-four hours she hardly moves, although she is awake. We take turns sitting with her. ‘Don’t leave me, Ricky,’ she says suddenly, in the depths of the night. I grasp her hand. I have begun to seek out a plan of Rosenstrasse’s sewers; it has occurred to me that this could be our best means of escape. Some of the sewers must run outside the walls, or connect with the underground river. She is so weak. She is fading. Her temperature is alarmingly high. Clara assures me there is nothing seriously wrong with her. I am suspicious of Clara. One is always suspicious of those one deceives. I too am dying, I suppose. That must be why Papadakis humours me so readily, no longer refusing me wine or anything else I demand. He can afford to be charitable. There is never any snow here, only relentless blues and yellows and whites occasionally softened by mist or rain. I can see no green trees from my window. How can they give beauty to me so easily and then take it away just as thoughtlessly? Why should she wish to do that? She stands in the snow with shredded flags limp on her remaining turrets, like a captured heroine. Mirenburg is defeated, but Holzhammer, perhaps so there should be no physical monument to his bestiality, is relentless. Hour after hour the shells fall on the city and at night she is livelier than by day, for her fires are now inextinguishable; her broken silhouettes possess a nobility they lack under the light of the sun. Mirenburg is all but dead. She makes sad, fluttering sounds and little whimpers: the steady booming we hear is the triumphant beating of enemy hearts. If they rape her now, they shall have only the satisfaction of violating a creature which has already made its peace with death. She will give them no pleasure; she will put no curse upon them. They have damned themselves.

We are not allowed outside. Captain Mencken sits beside the telephone, waiting for the instrument to give him orders. In the street there is a horse and cart. We can see it through a hole in the boarded window. All the glass is broken. The horse is dead, from shrapnel. ‘Mister’ was bringing it back, with our provisions. ‘Mister’ was killed, too. His body was dragged inside. The cart has remained there for hours. At night its silhouette is thrown onto the blinds by any nearby explosion. ‘That cart is the Devil’s own carriage,’ says Rakanaspya. ‘It is waiting for one of us.’ He laughs and pulls heavily on his brandy bottle. He is wearing an opera hat and cape. He has an ebony stick in his left hand, together with a pair of gloves. Captain Mencken wishes to know why the window is unprotected when all the others are boarded up. ‘We needed some air,’ says Rakanaspya. Frau Schmetterling has given shelter to a group of musicians. They are playing now. Their music is exotic, but its inspiration escapes me: there is an Oriental quality to it, though it follows the familiar form of a sonata. The musicians themselves have a slightly Asian cast to their features. Count Belozerski assures me they are not Russian. I have enquired the name of the composer, but I did not recognise it. They are still playing in the morning when I look through the blinds. I can smell the dead horse. In the half-light I see a young, naked child, squatting upon the carcass, picking with its claws at the tough, steaming meat, its own pink body seeming to merge into that of the dead beast, its black eyes hard and wary, like the eyes of a guilty crow. I once used to say that I had an ear for music, an eye for women and a strong distaste for death. While that little orchestra played and while I tortured myself over the question of Alexandra I came to doubt both former statements and to feel thoroughly reinforced in the latter. The whores do not bother to dress in their tasteful finery now. They make love in corners of the salon if they feel like it. Frau Schmetterling is hardly ever present. She has disappeared with Wilke. Only once did I hear her put her foot down in her old, firm way. It was when Inez, the Spanish girl, refused point blank to accompany Van Geest to the rocking-horse room. ‘I will not do any of those things,’ she had insisted. ‘It is quite true,’ Frau Schmetterling had said softly, ‘that Inez is not required, Herr Van Geest, to visit the rocking-horse room. Perhaps Greta would oblige?’ But Van Geest, lost in the depths of his own brain and very drunk, had insisted that he wanted Inez. ‘You said nothing of the rocking-horse room when you asked for Inez or I should have told you, Herr Van Geest, that she was not available. There has always been an agreement, after all.’ Van Geest offered to pay double. Inez had considered this and then again shaken her head. Van Geest had said angrily: ‘In other establishments girls like you are severely punished. There are Houses in Amsterdam which specialise in taming stupid, disobedient young women.’ Frau Schmetterling had pursed her lips. ‘Then I suggest you wait until you can return to Amsterdam, Herr Van Geest.’

Van Geest had glared and then given up, stumbling back to his room. Inez had begun to giggle in relief. Frau Schmetterling had been disapproving. ‘You should not have caused a scene,’ she had said. But there have been other scenes since and she has not been present to make the peace. Sometimes, when I have been keeping vigil beside Alice’s bed, I have had to go out into the corridor to beg people to be quiet. I have managed to get hold of the plans to the sewers. I have found a way of escape. When Alice murmurs to me and pleads for reassurance I tell her we are as good as free. All she has to do is to regain her strength. Soon she is a little better. I show her the plans. I describe the route we are going to take through the mountains to the border where we shall be able to get the train. She frowns. ‘Is there no other way?’ I shake my head. I begin to tell her how we shall drop into the sewers, what we can take with us, and what we shall tell the others. ‘It’s tiring.’ She sinks again into semi-sleep. ‘I’ll leave it to you.’ I am disturbed by this response. I have managed to do what she wants and she scarcely thanks me. I cannot fathom this sickness. Clara is certain it is a sickness of the spirit. We can only blame the shock of War. The horse is eventually freed from the shafts and what is left of it is butchered for meat. The naked child disappears. Four or five of our girls put on a tableau meant to take our minds off the relentless sound of shelling. Clara and I watch together, comfortable in each other’s company. The tableau represents something Arcadian and employs a great many artificial flowers which, of course, the girls have in abundance. Since only three of them speak reasonable German and the others have only the most limited vocabularies the ‘play’ becomes quickly incomprehensible with the result that the actresses are soon laughing more than the audience. Clara and I applaud. I glance furtively at her to see if she knows anything of my plan. She seems innocent of suspicion tonight. At dawn I slip away to look for the entrance to the sewer. It is not far from here, joining with the underground river which runs beneath Rosenstrasse. The intense light of the winter day threatens my eyes. I should be glad of Captain Mencken’s glasses. I manage to open the metal hatch beneath the archway of Papensgasse and I hear water running below, but it stinks. There can be no fresh water, other than melted snow, left in the whole of Mirenburg. I know that one can go from here to the main sewer, or get to it directly from the riverbed. I lower the hatch and walk down Papensgasse to inspect the river entrance to the sewer. Looking over the embankment wall from this side I can just see it, a murky hole rimmed with slime. It seems large enough. When the siege is lifted, I wonder, will they redirect the river to its old course or will it continue to follow the new one? There is a familiar whistling overhead. A Krupp shell begins to fall towards me. I run for the relative security of Papensgasse. I hear the shell but I have not heard the gun which fired it, either because it was so far away or because I am so used to the sound of cannon.

The shell falls not far from Rosenstrasse. Out of the dusty debris comes galloping a column of flying artillery. It stops in a flurry of hooves and steel on the embankment. The soldiers rush to position their guns so they point across the river at the Moravia. I slip back to the brothel and return to Clara. She stirs in her sleep. I am not sure she has noticed my absence. Since we all three take turns sitting with Alice Clara has become used to frequent comings and goings. Later that morning we both get dressed and go to see how the child is. To our considerable surprise she is not only up, she is eating cheese and drinking watered wine. Diana is full of joy. ‘What a wonderful recovery.’ Clara frowns.

I do my best to disguise my pleasure. Alice must be ready to travel. When Clara and Diana go downstairs together I hug my little girl. ‘Are you ready for our next adventure?’

‘Oh, yes!’ she grins at me, a conspiratorial innocent. ‘What’s the plan?’

I tell her we shall leave separately tonight. I will wait for her at midnight in Papensgasse, round the corner from the archway. ‘It might be easier than I thought. They’ve moved our guns up to the river. That probably means Holzhammer has broken through the defences and is in the Moravia already. We’ll come out well behind his main lines. I’ll buy horses, then it’s a clear ride to the border and a train.’ We hear sounds in the corridor. She says gently, with hesitant fingers on my arm:

‘You don’t think you’d be happier going with Clara?’ I am taken aback. My heart sinks. ‘Of course not. Why?’ She makes a little movement with her lovely shoulders. ‘Nothing.’ The door opens. ‘I’ll be there.’

Clara enters. She seems distressed. Has she guessed? ‘It’s Van Geest,’ she says. ‘He’s shot himself. God knows why. Downstairs is full of police and soldiers. They don’t seriously think it’s murder. But the building’s now officially occupied. Soldiers are being billeted here. Temporarily, they say, because of the ‘new emergency’, whatever that is.’ I return to the ground floor with her, so she will not get suspicious. I blow my smiling Alice a kiss as we leave. The vestibule is still hung with its many portraits of the French emperor whom Frau Schmetterling adored and who, some say, was her first lover. The soldiers show distaste for these pictures and seem discomfited by them. The officer in charge, Captain Kolovrat, attempts to order them removed from the walls. This Frau Schmetterling firmly refuses. She is the only one of us with any authority to resist them; my own choice is to pretend respect and to avoid them as much as I can. Unlike Mencken, these men are used to power and know how to gain it. A soldier must be broken in such a way as to make him wholly reliant upon his superiors, otherwise he cannot be controlled in battle. Most officers employ this knowledge in their dealings with women, first destroying their confidence, then supplying it themselves so that those they would command become entirely dependant upon them. I must admit to being nervous. They remind me of well-trained hounds: their natural ferocity, their terror of their own madness, contained and controlled almost entirely by their wills. Such personalities yearn for uniforms, for rituals. They demand them in others, for they must order a world they fear and thus will simplify themselves and those around them as much as they can. Captain Mencken is in conversation with a police inspector wearing a kepi and gold epaulettes on his maroon uniform. Captain Kolovrat, presumably senior to Mencken, struts about the salon inspecting its contents as if he were kicking his heels in a provincial art-gallery. He has a Prussian-style helmet decorated in gold and silver, a black and white uniform, and a variety of medals. His hand sticks his sword out behind him like the extended tail of a scorpion. His little fat face is embellished by a waxed moustache and a monocle. He wheels around and marches towards me to be introduced by a defeated Frau Schmetterling, whose only victory has been the pictures. He salutes me. I bow my head. He clicks his heels and says: ‘You must understand, sir, that every resident is now under military discipline. Your privileges, I regret, are at an end.’

‘They were over when ‘Mister’ died,’ says Frau Schmetterling softly. And then, to him: ‘I hope you don’t expect to find supplies here, Captain Kolovrat. We were living hand to mouth as it was.’

‘We shall see,’ he says. ‘I shall want inventories. Anything we use will, of course, receive a receipt and you can claim full payment from the government after the War. Mencken? Inspector Serval?’

‘Suicide without doubt,’ says Serval. ‘He was probably suffering from some form of delirium. Maybe bad meat, maybe drink, maybe a disease. The doctor will let us know. But he shot himself through the temple with his own revolver. A familiar situation at present.’

‘Disease,’ says Kolovrat, rubbing at his chubby chin. He rolls the word on his tongue and seems about to spit it out. ‘Of course. There must be a medical inspection. I shall send to headquarters.’

Frau Schmetterling is offended. ‘I assure you that the likelihood;’

‘The likelihood is what a soldier must consider, madame.’ He is fastidious and condescending. She falls silent, reconciled for the time being to this man’s swaggering rudeness. Mencken seems embarrassed and apologetic. Clara, Diana and I go with the others, girls and clients, into the salon. Alice is mentioned and excused because she is unwell. I present her papers. Kolovrat has had a bureau placed in the middle of the floor. He sits at this now, making up a register. One by one we give our names and nationalities, showing him our identification cards. We are allowed to sit or to stand around the walls of the salon. Outside, the shells are constant and from time to time the whole building shakes or more glass crashes to the floor. Kolovrat’s inquisition is frequently punctuated by the chiming of the chandelier over his head. One series of shots seems closer: I realise it is our own artillery, firing across the river. Kolovrat knows the sound, too, and looks up. I fail to read his fat little face. Eventually we are dismissed. Young soldiers stand to attention everywhere. Clara, Diana and myself are asked by Frau Schmetterling to accompany her to her kitchen. Whenever a shell lands nearby she jumps and looks at her shivering dresser, at her wonderful, rattling china. So far nothing is damaged. ‘I am worried,’ she says, ‘about my daughter. With ‘Mister’ gone Elvira has no-one but me… She sits down at her long table. Trudi, smiling in the background, makes us something to drink. Outside, there is a lull in the bombardment and we can hear Herr Ulric the butcher-cook in the courtyard. His loud healthy voice rings and echoes. He is arguing with a young cavalryman: ‘The horse is no good to you and no good to itself. It is dying of starvation!’ The soldier is passionate. ‘We shall die together!’ he shouts. The butcher is reasonable: ‘Go inside and fuck one of the girls. While you’re at it I’ll deal with the horse.’

‘You are disgusting!’

The butcher drops his voice and so does the cavalryman. We hear no more and soon the shells are landing again. The building is scarcely ever still. It is as if an earthquake perpetually shakes it. Frau Schmetterling says to Lady Cromach: ‘You have connections, I presume, in England. Could you get Elvira to school there? If anything happens to me.’

‘Nothing will happen to you, Frau Schmetterling, and of course I’ll do whatever I can. Do you wish me to recommend some schools, somewhere where Elvira could stay? I have an old nanny who still lives in London.’

‘Yes,’ says Frau Schmetterling. ‘That’s the sort of thing.’

She produces a notebook. ‘Some names and addresses?’

Lady Diana makes an awkward, affectionate gesture. She frowns and then spells in English. When she has finished she says: ‘If anything else comes to mind I’ll let you know. You wish your daughter to leave soon?’

‘Oh, yes, soon.’ Frau Schmetterling’s large bosom rises and falls. ‘I must stay with my girls. Elvira’

‘We’ll see that’s she’s safe,’ says Diana. ‘I promise.’ Her voice is soft and comforting. It has lost most of that inflexion which makes almost every word seem sardonic. She squeezes Frau Schmetterling’s shoulder. The madam sighs. ‘Thank you, Lady Cromach.’

Our band has begun to play again in the salon. Presumably Captain Kolovrat has decided this will improve morale. The staccato, nervous quality of the tune becomes increasingly intrusive as we sit in silence round Frau Schmetterling’s table, drinking spiced grog and getting a little drunk. The steady thumping of the guns, the shrieks and explosions, seem preferable to the music. Eventually, Frau Schmetterling rises and says she must speak to Ulric about lunch. She rings for the cook. He comes striding in, grinning widely. His leather apron is covered in blood. He bows to us. I envy him his insouciance as much as I envy him his sinewy arms, the strong veins standing out from the hard muscle. As we three leave the kitchen and return upstairs Diana remarks that I seem in unusually good spirits. We reach my door. Alice is sitting in the easy chair, reading a magazine. She kisses us, one by one. There is an air of excitement about her which amuses us all, even Clara. ‘The shock has worn off as quickly as it came,’ says my Rose.

‘That, I suppose, is the nature of such complaints. Particularly in the very young.’ Lady Diana thoughtfully strokes Alice’s hair. Alice puts lips to her wrist. We decide we shall all lunch together so that Alice can meet the new Captain. ‘That’s splendid!’ exclaims Alice. At lunch Rakanaspya and Count Belozerski eat in silence, perhaps in mourning for Van Geest. Caroline Vacarescu hangs on Count Stefanik’s arm but at the same time spares a bright smile for Captain Kolovrat and another for Captain Mencken, both of whom dine with us. Trudi is helped at the table by a young, red-faced military orderly who sweats visibly and whose smell is almost as vile as the meat we are eating. Egon Wilke, at Frau Schmetterling’s elbow, has an embarrassed air about him. He is presumably not comfortable sitting down to eat with so much Authority on either side of him. Kolovrat attempts to make a joke across the table, addressing Mencken. ‘Well, here we are, the two oldest professions in the world sharing a table. I suppose that is only proper. What would you rather be, Frau Schmetterling, a whore or a soldier?’

‘As a matter of fact, monsieur,’ she says in French, ‘I am neither. But I think I should rather be a whore. I see it as a superior calling.’

Kolovrat pretends to be amused, again seeking to catch Mencken’s eye and being baffled by the expressionless smoked glasses. ‘What? Why so, madame?’

‘I think there is a considerable difference,’ she says coolly, ‘between those of us who kill for a living and those of us who fuck for a living.’

Frau Schmetterling has never used such a word in public before. But Kolovrat is the only one who does not realise it. Presumably he thinks the proprietress of a brothel capable of any language.

‘In the first place,’ he says, ‘we do not willingly kill for a living. We are protecting the citizens of Mirenburg. And in the second place, what is sold here, surely is not honest fornication. This,’ he waves a fork, ‘this is death. This is corruption. The destruction of all true feeling. What has it to do with love? All you women have diseases. They kill my men, do they not? And turn them mad first, eh? Madame, I would prefer a bayonet in the stomach. That’s a better death than one you purchase at a whorehouse!’

Frau Schmetterling is calm. ‘The only death you will find here is the death of sentimental illusion. But even that...’

‘There is a corpse still upstairs awaiting collection!’ He laughs and chews the butcher’s latest prize. ‘That’s what I call death. And I say again: I’d rather have a bayonet in the stomach.’

Her smile is almost sweet. I have never seen her in this terrible, baiting mood, but Wilke, plainly, knows it well. He is privately amused. ‘Monsieur,’ she says, ‘there is a wide variety of alternatives. One does not necessarily have a disease and one may not go so far as to stab or be stabbed in the stomach. The soldier takes risks with his life. So do we. But we do not set out to kill or to enforce our wills upon others. I believe that our profession is the better of the two and can more easily be justified in moral terms. I do not wish to kill you, monsieur. I would wish, if I were a whore, merely to satisfy your lust in exchange for a crown or two.’ She stares directly into his little eyes and he again looks to Mencken, then frowns. Alice snorts behind her hand. Lady Cromach smiles and tries to silence her. The two of them are like older and younger sister today. I suddenly regret that our time together is over. I shall miss Diana almost as much as I shall my Rose. As we are finishing lunch, Albert Jirichek, a journalist for the Weekly Gazette, is granted a brief interview with Captain Kolovrat who is reluctant to speak in anything but the vaguest terms. It is true Holzhammer is in the Moravia, but it is not true he is making steady inroads. ‘Our armour is keeping him pinned down and there is every chance he will be defeated by tomorrow.’ As Kolovrat continues to speak, Jirichek opens his notebook and begins to scribble rapidly in shorthand. This causes Captain Mencken some amusement. ‘Are you unaware, Herr Jirichek, that the Gazette was blown apart by shell-fire this morning? I doubt very much if we shall see another edition within the next few days.’ It is evident he has no liking for the journal, which takes a mildly left-wing bias. Jirichek has not heard the news. He closes his notebook. He lifts his hand to one and all and departs the room in silence. Most of us laugh at this. I am relaxed, unwilling to leave the company too soon. I know I shall never experience this kind of comradeship again. By tomorrow Alice and I will be far away from the main fighting. By the day after we should have crossed the border into Saxony. From there it will be an easy matter to take the train to Paris. In less than three days we should have new wardrobes, a comfortable hotel and (delightful anticipation!) the finest food in the world. Alice and Diana decide to return upstairs because Alice says she feels faint. I am generous enough to want them to spend what time together they can. I tell myself that jealousy would be petty. Clara and I remain at the table, drinking brandy. Captain Kolovrat watches Alice leave. I feel sudden hatred of him. He begins to court me, because he desires her. His eyes follow her as he speaks to us. ‘Yesterday was hard work. The Vlodinya prison was shelled. In the confusion half the jailbirds escaped. We did our best to round them up; we herded them like wild cows but a few honest people got mixed in with them. It was a relief to be sent here. I don’t know why they wanted to escape. Those bastards were better off where they were!’ He is pleased with his joke and repeats it.

Frau Schmetterling, still intent on baiting him, leans towards him. ‘Have you ever been to prison, Captain Kolovrat?’

‘Of course not, madame.’

‘Has anyone else here been to prison?’ Wilke alone lowers his eyes. The rest of us shake our heads.

‘It destroys your personality,’ she says. ‘To maintain your morale you have to become a Top Dog. That means accepting all the ruthless conditions of prison life. You pay a high price by becoming inhuman and coarse. But if you do not become a hardened prisoner you go back into the world with no belief in yourself whatsoever. Prisons have little social benefit, Captain Kolovrat, save to lock a criminal away for a while. Their main task is to make us passive and malleable: whereupon they return us to persuasive friends who are usually outside the law and glad to suggest ways to easy wealth… Destroying the human spirit is not merely immoral. It is anti-social!’

I have never heard her speak so passionately. She has captured Rakanaspya’s attention. He asks her, with deference, how she is so well-informed about prison. She shrugs. She has known short spells in Berlin and in Odessa. She has talked to many people whose experience of prison was far worse than her own. ‘You know me, gentlemen. I am a law-abiding citizen. I believe in peace and quiet; an orderly society. You will not find me taking up the cause of anarchy. However, I can say from the bottom of my heart that the whole conception of prison is disgusting to me.’ With that she continues pecking at a tiny piece of stale cheese. She has brought silence to the company. Perhaps that was her intention. The table is shaken by another blast. Count Stefanik has undone his collar and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He is the kind of man who should wear loose, peasant clothes. Even then he would not seem entirely comfortable. He puts his hand under his beard and pushes it up towards his face. He is wary and thoughtful, as if he listens for Holzhammer’s footsteps in the vestibule. He is wanted by the Austrians for more than one offence, including the scattering of nationalist leaflets from the skies above Prague. If Holzhammer arrests him he knows that he, himself, faces prison, if not death. He sighs a deep desolate sigh and rises, excusing himself. ‘I feel sorry for him,’ says Clara. Caroline Vacarescu makes to follow him, then returns to offer Captain Mencken all her attention. She has given up her hopes, it seems of balloon-escape. A little later he passes the open door of the salon to go out. He clears his throat and puts on his hat and overcoat. ‘The man’s a fool to walk the streets!’ says Kolovrat dispassionately. ‘Perhaps he’d rather be killed than captured,’ says Rakanaspya. I am overwhelmed by a sudden depression, a fear of betrayal and loss. I excuse myself. I take Clara’s hand and we go upstairs to her room where I insist on making slow, gentle love. She is warm. She is tender. She is womanly. I rise in agitation from the bed. I am disgusted with myself. Another shell explodes nearby. She is baffled by my behaviour. I silence her question with a gesture.

She sits up. ‘This bombardment is getting on everyone’s nerves. I’m almost praying for defeat now, for peace, even the peace of the grave. If the Bulgarians are allowed’. She cannot finish.

‘The house must be evacuated before that happens,’ I say. ‘Every effort must be made to get the girls out and split up. They must not be recognised for what they are. Frau Schmetterling won’t keep this place going as a cheap soldier’s bordello. It would destroy the point of it. She has always been clear on that.’

Clara frowns. ‘True. But it will be up to the girls. They will be frightened. Are you leaving, Ricky?’

I ignore her question. ‘You wouldn’t stay here, would you? To service those pigs?’

She lowers her head. ‘No,’ she says, as if keeping her temper, as if I have insulted her. ‘No, I would not.’

‘That’s good. That’s good.’ I am distracted. It is almost dusk. I look at my watch. ‘My bag is packed and hidden. I assume Alice has also packed. The time is passing slowly. ‘Let’s have some cocaine,’ I say. ‘Then I think I’ll go downstairs and see what’s happening.’ She begins to prepare the drug. ‘Be careful,’ she says, when I go.

In the dirty snow of the quays the soldiers stagger to their guns with shells from boxes stored for safety’s sake behind sandbags on the other side of the street. I watch them through the murk. They are ham-fisted, filthy, worn out. Black smoke billows across the southern suburbs. It would appear Holzhammer has fired that entire section of the city. An officer, mounted on a skinny horse, peers through field-glasses and sees nothing. The smoke is oily, moving sluggishly. It is snowing fitfully again. Papadakis! The pain is coming back! It is like shrapnel in my belly! Oh, God, I need a woman here. But I have spent too long taking revenge on women. Now there are none to comfort me. When romance dies, cynicism replaces it, unless one is prepared to relinquish all the consolations of religion at a stroke. I could not. I fled into lies, flattery, deceitful conquest. I fled into mistrustful artifice. Even my wholesome lechery became tainted by fear and wary cunning. I lost my capacity to trust. Was I so dishonest and so hypocritically cruel before Mirenburg? Too much romance was destroyed at once, in the space of a few days. Mirenburg crumbles. The twin spires of St-Maria-and-St-Maria are down. The Hotel Liverpool is obliterated. All the care and artistry of centuries, all the worship, the love, the genius, is ground up as if in a mortar and scattered on the wind. The museums and the galleries, the monasteries and the great houses, fall down before Holzhammer’s insane ferocity. It is too late to parley. Holzhammer will not accept anything less than the absolute obliteration of the city. He wants no monuments to remind him of his crime. These are the actions of children, of wild beasts. Love and hope drown beneath the exploding iron. Clara is still in bed when I return. She stretches on her cushions, smoking a cigarette, looking at me with an expression I find unreadable, but which I fear is contempt. Tt is terrible out there,’ I say. ‘The whole southern side is burning. The Radota Bridge is destroyed and all the statues are down. The river is piled with corpses. Presumably they were trying to get away from the Bulgarians.’

Clara nods to herself and offers me a lighted cigarette which I take. ‘Are we to expect them tonight, do you think?’

‘Not tonight. But possibly tomorrow. At the latest the day after.’

‘Then perhaps we should do something.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It would be a good idea. I have plans. I’ve some business this evening. I won’t tell you about it now, not until I’m certain. But in the morning, everything should be clear.’

I detect a smile on her long lips. She stretches and yawns. I want to see Alice, to remind her exactly of the plan, to be certain that she knows what we are to do. But I console myself that it is simple enough. She will meet me in Papensgasse at midnight, slipping out unseen as I shall slip a little earlier.

‘Shall we go to Alice and Diana, to see how the child is?’ asks Clara. I dart her a look. ‘Leave them. They said they wanted to rest.’

She shrugs. ‘Just as you like.’ Then she says: ‘Come here, Ricky. I want to make love to you.’

I am disconcerted. Off-duty she is not normally so direct. But I do as she orders. I undress. She is ferocious. She kisses every part of me. She sits astride me, shoving my penis into her cunt. The pleasure is astounding. It seems altogether fresh. I am exhausted. She throws herself off me, laughing. ‘That wasn’t fair. But I enjoyed it.’

I kiss her. ‘What?’ she says. ‘You seem to be crying.’ Of course I am not crying. Where is Papadakis? I need to piss and the pot is full. I am having trouble breathing. The lamp is flickering. There is not enough air in this room. The flowers are wilting.

As soon as Clara is asleep I get up carefully and go to the cupboard where I have hidden my bag. I dress and creep from the room. The house rocks and vibrates constantly. It will not be long before there is a direct hit. Half Rosenstrasse bears the marks of Krupp now. There is noise and music from •the salon. No soldiers guard the door. I am out into the cold, into the darkness, shivering and suddenly very cowardly. I think to turn back, but it would be impossible. I move falteringly between the heaps of filthy snow, through the passage and into Papensgasse. There will be no military patrols tonight, I am sure, to enforce the curfew. I look at my watch. It is eleven-forty-five. I will not have long to wait. Soon Alice will be mine alone. Married. I shall be secure with her. She would not dare to betray me. But this will not stop us sharing further adventures—and in Paris! The very prospect warms me and makes me forget how cold I am. Firelight dances on the far river bank. Men are shouting. There is not much terror in their voices now. They are too weary. The guns fire. The guns reply. Love will come back to me. Alice is late. She will be having trouble getting away from Diana. We shall roll again in fresh linen, with great cups of newly-made coffee in the mornings, with delicate lunches in the restaurants of the Champs Elysees, with drives to Versailles, and in the summer we shall go south to Venice, and I will show her North Africa and bring joy to her exotic heart. But it is twelve-thirty. I hear voices whispering in Rosenstrasse. Has she been caught? Eventually I risk peering round into the street; it is too dark to see anything. Then, at last, someone emerges from the archway and I grin to myself, full of the prospect of escape and further adventure. The woman wears a cloak with a cowl covering her head. I know immediately that it is Clara and I am filled with hatred for her. She has guessed! She has interfered. She lifts a hand to silence me. ‘They went hours ago,’ she says. ‘I thought this might be what you were doing. They left before dark, Ricky.’ I fall back against the wall, not fully understanding; not wishing to understand. ‘What?’

‘Diana and our Alice have gone together,’ she says quietly. She takes my hand. ‘You’re very cold. You’d better come back.’

‘No!’ I think it is a trick. I pull free of her. ‘There was an agreement, Clara. You should not be doing this. Where are they?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll freeze to death, if a bullet doesn’t kill you.’

‘Where are they?’

‘They were as secretive with me as with anyone. They could have joined Count Stefanik. It’s my only guess.’

‘Stefanik? His balloon?’

‘A guess.’

‘Where is his balloon?’

‘I have no idea where he kept it. It’s probably destroyed. It was a guess.’

I begin to run up Papensgasse and through the Botanical Gardens. There are fires everywhere. The soldiers ignore me. I get to Pushkinstrasse and I cannot recognise anything. There are no more buildings. I look up into the blazing night sky in the hope of seeing the airship. The Indian Quarter has vanished. The Customs House is a guttering cinder. Within an hour I am standing in the ruins of her church. The Yanokovski Promenade has become a mass of black rubble. I can see St-Maria-and-St-Maria on the hill, twin chimneys of light. Flames course through the cathedral, glowing from every window. She is roaring as if in pain and anger. And the shells continue. Holzhammer must surely have come to relish the destruction for its own sake. We are at his mercy. And he is not merciful. Little Bohemia and the Synagogue are one hellish pyre. I reach down to pick up a piece of masonry. It is a small stone head, part of the motif above the left-hand column framing the central door: the face of a woman. It seems to me that she stares past my shoulder at a memory. The expression on her face is resigned. Has that expression always been there? For the three hundred years of her existence has she always known this would be her fate? There is no snow. The Theatre is an insubstantial outline of dancing red and orange. Everything is melting in the heat. Later I will hear that Prince Badehoff-Krasny had ordered the remains of the city to be fired. (‘This is my Moscow’). Nobody will ever come to understand how Mirenburg fell, any more than they will really know how Magdeburg was destroyed or what led to the extinction of Troy. Man’s greatest monuments, his architecture, never outlast his acts of aggression. At dawn I wade through fields of ash. I cannot find her. Thin sunlight attacks the drifting smoke. Little groups of people wander here and there, each with a bundle, none with any hope. They look at me, some of them, as I pass, but most trudge on with their heads bowed. There are fewer shells, now. They fall on ruins and pulverise them. As I pass it, the Casino collapses in on itself. There is hardly anything left for them to destroy. I cannot find her. Periodically, I inspect the sky. There is no ship there. I would like to think it has borne her up. In my mind’s eye I can see the bright reds and golds of the balloon’s canopy in contrast to the grey, misty luminousness of the morning. Dressed in his Chinese silk shirt and riding breeches, with a gaily-dressed woman on either side of him, the young Bohemian aviator lifts a strong arm to his valves. I can see the balloon rising higher and higher above the flattened wastes of our murdered city, as if Mirenburg’s spirit goes free. I can see her smiling carelessly, merely enjoying the sensation of flight, forgetful of me and of everyone. She kisses the bearded cheek of Stefanik not from any particular affection but from simple, passing gratitude to the person who has given her this, her most recent, pleasure.

One should never attempt to possess a beautiful whore, or hold on to the soul of a child, nor assault an idea as fragile as Mirenburg. Alice. I shall never fully understand why you fled from me. I wish you had been able to tell me the truth. But, if I were ever to confront you, you would reply: ‘You must have known.’ and dismiss all responsibility for your deception. ‘You must have known.’ But when you deny my suspicions that is a deeper lie still. ‘You must have known, that I deceived you. It is your fault for not admitting it.’ Yet did I really ever guess? Was I not always too afraid of the true answer? They will build a new city along the fresh course of the river. It will be called Svitenburg as a sop to the nationalists who are soon, of course, to become Austrian subjects in all but name. It is still little more than an industrial village. Its most impressive buildings are its warehouses. Did Alexandra live to marry a well-to-do Swiss and give him little babies in Geneva? She could banish all the old shadows, the memories of a ‘wicked past’, and have forgotten a lifetime in a matter of hours. And Waldenstein will become Svitavia again, a province of Bohemia, then a department of Czecho-Slovakia; forty years later that is what she remains, looking to Prague, such a poor imitation of Mirenburg, for her directions. Here in the yellow heat and ease I have spent the past eighteen years peering out at the world I came to fear. The Germans rise again and recover their wealth through patriotism, mysticism and a fascination with steel, as they will always do; the French continue to squabble and refer to past glories as solutions for the future; the English see their society collapsing all around them and find a panacea in American jazz; the Russians stir and dream again of Empire, having revived the methods and ambitions of Ivan the Terrible. And the Italians have conquered poverty, although they had to go to Abyssinia to do it. Waldenstein, settled in the arms of her new Slavic mother, is left, at least, in peace. When I return to Rosenstrasse, Captain Kolovrat has galloped off about some other importance. The brothel is now almost the only whole building in the street. Captain Mencken commands the two or three soldiers left. He has no orders and he is drunk. The smoked glasses fall down on his nose as he looks at me and offers a bottle. I shake my head. Therese and Renee, all lace and dark stockings, sit together on a couch singing a little song together. ‘Your wife,’ he says, ‘is upstairs I believe.’ He is perfectly grave. ‘Do you speak,’ he drinks again, ‘Bulgarian by any chance?’ He laughs. He appears to have fled into that familiar, self-protective dramatisation which is only one step away from hysteria. I am in no hurry to see Clara. I accept the offer of his bottle. ‘We can abandon ourselves to War quite as readily as we can abandon ourselves to lust,’ says Mencken, making an effort to hand up the bottle to me. ‘And War’s so much easier and less mystifying than sex, is it not?’ He grins at me. ‘I’m serious.’ I do not doubt it. He lets his eye drift towards the ladies who are as drunk as he is and are giggling together. ‘War doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t have shades of meaning. It demands courage, of course, and decisive action. It offers glory and threatens death. But lust offers pain and threatens us with life, eh?’ He is pleased with this turn of phrase.

The sunlight begins to shine through the shattered boards and glass. I put the bottle back into his hands and with a sigh climb up to Clara and a reckoning. Holzhammer will become Governor Regent of Waldenstein under the Austrians and will be blown to pieces by an Anarchist bomb in 1904. Clara is asleep. There is no confrontation. I feel vague disappointment. I leave her and return to my room, hoping to find a clue. My anger with Lady Cromach is growing. She has deceived me treacherously. And yet my actions were no less treacherous. It is different, I tell myself, but I know it is not. I cannot feel the same anger towards Alice. The room is strewn with all her abandoned finery, with half-packed trunks and bags. I pick up a pair of pale blue silk drawers. They still stink of her. There are no notes. But in a cupboard I find some crumpled sheets of violet notepaper with scraps of Alice’s handwriting on them and little pictures of the sort a schoolgirl might draw when bored. I spread them on top of the Chinese dresser. There is a quotation from something: It’s a fine day. Let’s go fishing said the

worm to the man. And another scrap: He is not what I imagined him to be. I am beginning to shake. ‘You are a fool!’ I say. ‘For you could have become what I imagined you to be. You have ruined any possibility of that now. What a woman you might have been.’ It is my failure. I feel it as a painter might experience a failure of creativity. It is as if half my own flesh has been torn from me, half my mind stolen. The guns batter my past into the dust and my future has run away into the ruins. I am so horribly betrayed. And it is my own doing. My anger comes on me suddenly and I begin to rip at her dresses, her underwear, her aigrettes, stamping on her little shoes, flinging silk and lace and feathers into the air until my tiredness causes me to collapse, sucking at a hand I have somehow cut, in the middle of the debris. I have tried to destroy everything which reminds me of her, which hurts me. I poured so much of myself into that valueless vessel. As I squat there, weeping and shaking, Clara enters the room. She is wearing a patterned tea-gown over her nightclothes. She moves here and there, replacing ornaments, clearing up broken china and glass. ‘She’s taken every piece of jewellery,’ she says. I moan at her to go away. She stands looking down on me. ‘Have you hurt yourself badly?’

‘No.’

She closes the door behind her.

When, at length, I return to Clara’s room she is asleep again with the sheets drawn over her head. I take off my jacket and my waistcoat and go to sit in the armchair near the window. I cannot sleep. Every time I close my eyes I am filled with bitter images, with a yearning for the recent past and all the happiness I have lost. Mirenburg is gone. Papadakis grumbles at me as he brings back the clean chamber pot. ‘You’ve pissed in the bed again,’ he says. ‘I know it. I can smell it.’

He has made me stand, leaning on the table and trembling, while he gathers up the soiled linen. ‘I’m going to bring the doctor in the morning.’ Now the bed is clean. Through the open window comes the smell of hyacinths and the sea. Mirenburg no longer lives; she is a grey memory. She has been biding her time, hiding in a neurasthenic slumber while she waited for the best which would be offered to her: a kind of hibernation because she did not want to accept my offer but was afraid to refuse it, afraid to take any action. What had Diana promised? I doubt if it was anything than a more glamorous, if less realistic, plan of escape. Stefanik’s balloon? I get out of the chair. My legs are weak. Clara turns, casting off her covering to hold out tolerant arms. Her face is full of controlled sympathy. How can she forgive me? Why do women do this to us? I begin to weep again. ‘We are going away this evening,’ she says. ‘It is all arranged with Frau Schmetterling. We will take Elvira. Wilke will be with us. How did you plan to escape from the city?’ Still snivelling, I tell her about the underground river and the sewers.’ She pats my shoulder. ‘Not bad. It could work.’ Eventually I go to sleep. I am awakened by an explosion. From somewhere within the house I hear voices shouting and the crash of falling plaster. It is dark in the room. I lie on the bed and wait for the next shell. Instead the door opens and Clara stands there, an oil-lamp raised in her hand. Frau Schmetterling is with her. The madam holds something in her hands. It is a bloody, palpitating chow-dog. ‘They have killed Pouf-Pouf,’ she says flatly. ‘And this poor little one is dying, too.’

Clara is already in her outdoor clothes: a black and grey tailor-made. Over this she draws a plain cloak of the sort peasant women wear. She points to a bundle at her feet. ‘Here are some of ‘Mister’s’ clothes. They should fit you. You’ll have to leave your wardrobe behind, my dear.’

I have become pliable and obedient. The dog begins to groan. Frau Schmetterling whispers something to Clara and then returns downstairs. I receive a strange feeling of satisfaction as I pull on the rough garments; it is almost as if I shall wear sackcloth in mourning for Mirenburg and my slain imagination. ‘I want reality so badly,’ I tell Clara. ‘She was won over by nothing more than a fantastic promise.’

‘Very likely.’ Clara helps me button the coat. ‘Do you still have the map?’

I give it to her. ‘We’ll put Wilke in charge, I think,’ she says. ‘At least for the moment. Are you feeling any better?’

‘I want reality,’ I tell her.

‘This is reality enough for anyone.’ She is humorous. ‘But I’m sure you’ll find a way out of it. I trust your instincts for that. Lead the way, your lordship.’

We leave, the four of us, in the night. In Rosenstrasse we have to pass two soldiers who are still alive, though their bodies are dreadfully mutilated. They call out to us for help. ‘I’ll deal with them,’ says Frau Schmetterling, hurrying us forward.

Wilke and I raise the cover of the manhole. He goes first, swinging the lamp we have brought with us. Our shadows slide this way and that on the moist stones of the shaft. The metal ladder leads us down into the old watercourse. Elvira is too small to keep her head above the water, so I raise her on my shoulders. Throughout this journey I will find a kind of delicate consolation in being allowed to tend to the child’s needs and will catch myself occasionally using the same kind of words and gestures used by ‘Mister’ in his conversation with her. We wade through shit and corpses to some sort of liberty, emerging on the fringes of the Moravian inferno and joining lines of refugees stumbling towards the cleaner air of a countryside stripped of all its wealth. We walk steadily for two more days until we cross the Bohemian border and are able, with the gold Frau Schmetterling has given us, to get a train to Prague where we separate. Wilke will take Elvira to England. I still have no volition and allow Clara to make every decision. We go first by train to Berlin and the hospitality of my brother Wolfgang, who congratulates me on the charm and the breeding of my English fiancée. Within days, of course, we are taken up by Society. Everyone must hear of our experiences. I recover myself sufficiently to present at least an acceptable facade and I speak with authority of the suffering and destruction I have witnessed. I am asked to write the articles which become that silly book The 100 Day Siege: A Personal Record of the Last Months of Mirenburg. I mention nothing of any real importance to me, but for a while I become a hero.

Holzhammer’s villainy is the subject of a thousand editorials. He is called the Butcher of Mirenburg and the perfidy of Austria-Hungary has shocked, we read, the entire civilised world. But Holzhammer rules and Badehoff-Krasny is exiled and the diplomats gradually do their seedy work so that the Peace of Europe is maintained for a few more years. And Mirenburg is gone. I hear many rumours, but there is no news of Alice. I will talk to anyone who has a grain of gossip. It is still hard for me to accept that so much beauty has vanished as a result of trivial political decisions. There will never be a brothel like Frau Schmetterling’s in Rosenstrasse, for there will never be another Mirenburg, with its history and its charm. And psycho-analysis has made us too self-conscious. This is an age of great remedies; they seem to believe there is a cure for human greed. There is not. But neither should the greedy be condemned. They should merely be guarded against. Greed is not evil. What is evil is the manipulation of others in order to satisfy it; the quest for power. That is the crime. Do you hear me, Papadakis? He is still shuffling about in the shadows.

Will you read this, Alice, in your Geneva home? Or did you die with the others in Mirenburg? I could not find you. In London and Dublin we thought to discover news of Lady Cromach, but she had not returned. Someone said she had changed her name ‘because of certain scandals’ and might be living in Paris. But she was not in Paris. And as for Princess Poliakoff, all we heard of her was that she could have gone to India. They said that on Sunday, 19th December 1897, when Holzhammer’s troops arrived at Rosenstrasse, Poliakoff had sat in her old lover’s carriage and directed the mercenaries into the brothel. I can imagine with what pleasure the Bulgarians took our ladies (‘All they found later was a pile of bloody lace’). Baby is crying, Lady Cromach used to say. Baby is angry. Rakanaspya was killed, probably by the Austrians. Count Belozerski was wounded but managed to return to Kiev where I believe he still lives, writing about factories. Baby is crying. We are lost. Deserted. That which comforts us grows old and dies. We long to recapture it; the security of childhood, the attention of others. Clara was familiar with Lady Cromach’s remarks. But she was not so tolerant of Baby. ‘Sooner or later,’ she said to me, ‘that baby’s crying becomes an irritant to our adult ears. It is then we have the right to turn upon the weak and with all due ruthlessness squeeze the life from a silly, mindless creature. If we are to survive, Baby must be destroyed.’

I was not to meet Frau Schmetterling for a long time, after Clara had despaired of my sniffing after Alice’s non-existent trail and had returned to Germany alone. Clara said, as she waited on the platform for her train: ‘I shall always love you, Ricky, for what you are, as well as what you could have become. But I know you are in love with an illusion, and it is a lost illusion at that. What would happen if you found her, if Mirenburg had not been destroyed? What would have happened if she had stayed with you? You have told me yourself. You know, but you refuse to act on your knowledge. And that is madness.’ Now my honest Clara is gone and I am alone with an obsession which has taken up my life and drained from me what was not already drained by the treacherous Alice, who refused to be what I needed her to be. She was myself. The city is gone. She would be fifty-seven years old now. Frau Schmetterling was in Dresden, the proprietress of an ordinary boarding house catering to single middle-class gentlemen. I reminded her gently of our ordeal in Mirenburg. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was ghastly. Hardly a saucer remained of all that crockery I had collected over twenty years.’

I asked if she had heard anything of my Alice. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not unless she was the one who married the Swiss. I think she was killed, wasn’t she? I hope those bastards didn’t rape her.’ Frau Schmetterling had attempted to protect her girls from the troops but she had eventually left Mirenburg with Renee and Trudi and joined Wilke in Brighton. They had gone to America for a little while, but had not been able to stay. Most of her girls had had no means of travelling so the house had rapidly become a common bordello used by the occupying army. The Bulgarians had been brutes. Everything of value had been stolen during the looting. ‘I heard,’ the old madam told me, ‘that at least one of the girls was killed. Remember Dolly? Natalia told me. I met Natalia outside the theatre one evening, in Cologne. She was selling flowers. She dropped the whole basket to hug me!’ Frau Schmetterling had laughed before she became serious again. ‘She was the one who told me about Dolly. Those Bulgars destroyed everything that was delicate. They ruined everything beautiful. They didn’t understand the rocking-horse room, so they simply ripped it apart. They killed the acrobat. That friend of ‘Mister’s’. Laches! He insulted an officer, apparently.’

Natalia had stayed on, she had told Frau Schmetterling, in the hope of filling the madam’s place when things calmed down. Several of the whores had had the same idea. But Holzhammer had given the order to destroy every building left standing. ‘They were lucky, in the end, to escape with the clothes still on their backs. Natalia left with a returning Bulgarian officer. He knocked her about. She got away from him in Buda-Pesht, she told me, while they were changing trains. She was married. She wasn’t on hard times. Her husband had a big flower-business in Cologne. They had two little boys. And Caroline Vacarescu escaped. I don’t know how. She married an American and went to live in Ohio, though I believe she’s now in California. Elvira’s at university, you know, in Munich. She still remembers you carrying her through that sewer.’ Frau Schmetterling had winked at me with a trace of her old good humour. ‘You’d like her. She’s just your type.’ I was able to laugh and tell her that I had lost interest in females under twenty-five when Mirenburg was destroyed. ‘But what about the balloonist, that Czech?’ She thought he had probably tried to get his airship up and had been shot down by Holzhammer’s artillery. Much later I heard a rumour that, under an assumed name, he had been killed on the Eastern Front in 1915, flying a plane of his own design against the Austrians. Someone else said he had died with the Czech Legion in Siberia.

Frau Schmetterling had made me eat a huge dinner and had introduced me to her new dogs, two pugs. When I had left she had kissed me and said that I should look after my health. ‘It is a shame you’ll never make a fool of yourself over a woman again. Your mistake was in refusing to believe that another woman could be a worthy rival. Men will do that.’ I had shaken my head. ‘I respected her insufficiently. And in my efforts to obscure my motives from her I lost her forever.’ But Frau Schmetterling had been impatient with this. ‘Interpret it any way you choose, Ricky. The fact was that you seduced a child and you paid the price for it.’ She had shrugged. ‘And she would always have been a child, probably, with men like you to look after her. She’s a child now, if she married that Swiss. Enjoy youth when it’s given to you. It’s a mistake to try to imprison it, though. It’s too greedy, Ricky. And it never works, my boy.’ She is still in Dresden, I believe. We exchange postcards every couple of years. Prince Badehoff-Krasny lived not twenty miles from me, up the coast, until his death. Von Landoff replaced Holzhammer as Governor, after the assassination. Captain Mencken was killed in Papensgasse, firing a carbine at the Bulgarians as they swept round from the embankment. Had Princess Poliakoff died in Mirenburg? Frau Schmetterling wrote that she might have done. She could not remember if Poliakoff had been with Holzhammer when the Bulgarians took over the brothel, but she remembered the rumour. ‘Personally, I think she died in the bombardment.’

Alice. My Alexandra. My little schoolgirl. Your soft body is no longer warm. Your perfume is faint. I see you in your red and gold balloon as it drifts up towards the silver sunshine. I wish it was my cheek you kiss as you lean over the rim of the gondola and see the spreading ash, the few remaining ruins, saying ‘Look, there’s the Radota Bridge! Isn’t it terrible! And there’s the Cathedral! And there’s Rosenstrasse. Wave, Ricky!’ It is so hard to write. The light is very dim for midday. I must tell Papadakis to turn on the gas. Clara married. She runs a restaurant in Liege and has done well for herself, though they say her husband is a drunk. She loved me. She told me she would always love me, but she had to look after herself. I understood. She had given me too much, I said. She had shaken her head. ‘It would not have been too much if you had wanted it.’ I spent so many cynical years in pursuit of my dream, in revenge on those I blamed for destroying it. And I never found her. She is washed away in that grisly tide. It is ash. She is a ghost. The twin spires glitter in the early afternoon sun. We look down past them towards the white walls. We are having a picnic. Falfnersallee and the Restaurant Schmidt. Waiting for her. I sip absinthe in the sunshine opposite the Radota Bridge. We visit the dress-shops and the jewellers. Deep in the luxury of the brothel. A riding crop rises and falls. A distant, excited scream. Lady Cromach’s smile betrays the betrayer. Clara loved me. That last soft kiss. Alexandra. It was a blow to the groin. I can still feel the bruise. My right hand has started to tremble. Papadakis must bring me some more wine. The sea is too loud. The pain is nothing. I can return to Mirenburg whenever I wish.